Joseph Cowley

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TWO WOLVES

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, 'My son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.'

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: 'Which wolf wins?'

The old Cherokee simply replied, 'The one you feed.'

MORE ON TIME/ENERGY

When you (my daghter)called last night and asked what I did with my extra time, I didn't explain it to you correctly. Other people have asked me the same question and I have fobbed them off with an irrelevent list of activities. Here is the true answer:

I had rapid aging for three months recently, from the middle of June to the middle of September. I didn't know whether it was the end-game (death) or decline into frail old age; it took Pat (my daughter-in-law)saying seemed depressed to make me realize, after thinking it over, that I was.

The depression lifted when I hit this new level, frail old age. One of the interesting things about younger people is that they don't seem to understand time. I deal with this on the Bulletin Board (see somewhere below), but shall try to explain it in a little more here.

First of all, what is time? We don't really know. Its closest equivalent is energy. We perceive energy as motion; and we use motion to measure time, which is quite relative. This is, basically, what Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is all about.

Each observer sees an event in time relative to their position in space relative to the event and their distance from the event (which automatically means it is seen at a different time by the different observer.

We measure time by movement (as I said), but it is quite an arbitrary assignment of motion. In our particular world we measure time by the spinning of our earth and its orbit around our sun.

From some other observation point, the measure of time might be quite different. For example, we have estimated, by our time standard, that the cosmos is something like 14.5 billion years old.

I, personally, believe we are in the midst of a gigantic explosion which, by cosmic standards (the largest measure of time; unless of course, you can make the case for a god that comprehends all) might have been going on for only 14.5 seconds.

Okay, let's get down to the more mundane. There is also psychological time, or time as we perceive it. To babies, for example, time passes extremely slowly (because all of their energy is going into growth,
which is why they change so much, in the first six months especially. Whic is why they have so very little energy left over to impact on their concept of
time.

Now, taking it a step forward, think of children. Remember your own childhood, when the time between getting out of school and going into the house for dinner stretched endlessly? All that energy, all that motion, a child has slows the perception of time (actually, increases it, because our perception of time is all we have in our "nows").

Over our lifetimes, time gradually slows as our energy decreases, and therefore our motion. You will begin to find this very noticeable about the age and on. From here on time (your perception of it, and therefore your actual time) will gradually speed up, until by the time you get into your 70s and 80s you can't help but notice the speedup, which is no longer gradually increasing, but rapidly increasing.

When you get into frail old age, energy, and therefore motion, dips drastically. This is what I use to call the "rocking chair" stage of life. We don't have the energy to do anything, and time just zips by.

I'm aghast at how frequently I have to fill my weekly pill box. I sit at the table doing nothing, or not knowing what I am doing, and the new digital clock I bought beeps the hour, and two minutes later beeps the hour again. I don't know where the hour went.

People ask me what I did over the weekend, say, and I can't tell them. Because the answer is "nothing," and I
can't explain it to them. No one but the elderly know what time is like when you have no energy. My, my, how fast it goes by. I turned 85 yesterday, and I will be dead before I can turn around.

One main result of this loss of energy, and therefore of time, is that it takes a might effort of the will to do anything. And I mean anything. Write,
run an errand, file two sheets of paper, clean a dish, etc., etc. Personally, tThe only thing that doesn't seem to have slowed down on me is my mouth; I
can still talk and still write in an undisciplined manner, as this entry indicates.

So, the next time someone asks me what I'm doing with all the extra time (I lost my part-time job a couple months ago), I will tell them the truth: Nothing. They won't understand it, but I'll say it anyhow. Only if you've ever had a touch of sloth will you have a chance of grasping what time/energy and old age is all about.

ANOTHER FINE MESS

As regards the crisis in this country, not only the mess the financial institutions have gotten us into, due to their greed and growing largeness and interdependence, and the constant pressure on the mass of people (us) to over-consume, and in light of the growing spread between the rich and the rest of us, who like to think we’re the middle class but are actually included in the bulk of the people who are poorer than they have ever been and working harder than ever to keep it that way, these words from Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station: The Revolutionary Tradition in Europe and the Rise of Socialism explicating some of Karl Marx’s statements on an unregulated capitalist system, seem to me quite revealing. He may have been wrong about a lot of things, but not economics.

Marx believed that the capitalist system involved fundamental contradictions which ensured its eventual destruction. His theory of these contradictions – which he thought of in terms of Hegelian opposites*[– may be stated with much simplification as follows:

The capitalist system was based on private property and so was inevitably competitive. The aim of every manufacturer was always to undersell the rest, so that there would be a continual stimulus to more efficient methods of production. But the more efficient an industry became – the faster the machines were able to do the work and the fewer people were needed to tend them – the more people would be thrown out of jobs and the more would wages be reduced. That is, the more the commodities produced, the fewer the people who would be able to buy them. In order to get rid of his goods under these continually tightening conditions, the manufacturer would have to undercut his competitors, and that would mean further reduction of wages and still more efficient machinery, and, consequently, again in the long run, fewer people would be able to buy what he was making. This situation has already produced a jam and a depression about every ten years; and the only way for the manufacturer to get a reprieve from the vicious cycle was to find new foreign markets for his products – an escape which would not in the long run save him.

The more efficiently goods were manufactured, the more money would be needed for the plant; and it would seem to pay the manufacturer to build the plant bigger and bigger. Thus the industries would keep growing and the companies keep merging till each industry would be well on its way becoming one great unified organization, and the money which kept them going would have been concentrated in a very few hands. But actually the bigger big business grew, the larger the sums of money it dealt in, the smaller its rate of profit became. At last the contradictions involved in this process would jam the whole system so badly – there being no more fresh markets available – that it would become intolerable, impossible, for society to function at all unless the money and the great centralized plants were taken away from the people who claimed to own them and who were incapable of conceiving them as a means to any more beneficent end than that of making themselves rich out of the profits, and were run for the public good. The working [read “middle”] class would be able to accomplish this, because it would have increased to enormous proportions and have grown conscious of its interests as a class as incompatible with the interests of its employers; and it would now find itself so hard-pressed by privation that no alternative would be possible for it. All its scruples would be overcome by the realization that this privation coincided with an era when the production of what they needed had become possible with an ease and on a scale which had never been imagined in history.

Now we may reject the Hegelian-Marxist Dialectic as a genuine law of nature, but we cannot deny that Marx has here made effective use of it to demonstrate the necessity for socialism. Nothing else had so brought home the paradoxes of destitution imposed by abundance, of great public utilities rendered useless by the property rights of those who controlled them. Nor was it necessary to accept the metaphysics of the Labor Theory of Value and to argue from it a priori, as Mr. Strachey does, in order to be convinced by Marx that this process must land capitalism in an impasse. The great thing was that Marx had been able, as the bourgeois economists had not, to see the capitalist economy in the perspective of the centuries as something which, like other economies, had had a beginning and must have an end. Mathematician, historian and prophet, he had grasped the laws of its precipitate progress and foreseen the disasters of its slumps as nobody else had done.

* This is not important to this quote; it involves what is called thesis, antithesis, then synthesis. In other words, to simplify it pretty badly, pressure in society to grow and change, counter-pressure to keep things as they are, and a compromise that resolves the contrary pressures so that growth can take place.

My comments: This is remarkable in as much as Marx pondered and wrote these ideas back in the 1860s or 70s. Wilson’s book, which is one of the best histories of an ideology that I know of (i.e. an intellectual history), was published in 1940. Unbridled capitalism has lasted as long as it has only because two brave U.S. Presidents did something about it: Theodore Roosevelt when he trust-busted (took action) against the powerful financiers of his day; and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered this country toward socialistic solutions to the great Depression of his day.

Otherwise politicians, both Democrat and Republican, but especially Republican, have been financed by the powerful rich with their lobbies and bribes, and have not tried very hard to regulate or control the enormous greed of those who seek power and money as their only goals in life. Reagan began the deregulation, at the same time running up a trillion dollar debt whose only good was to bankrupt the Soviet Union and bring an end to the Cold War. The death blow has been given by George W. Bush, who started his first administration by giving a trillion dollars to the wealthy few, and starting a foolish war that has already been the longest this country has ever fought and is still costing us ten billion dollars a month (one billion of which, naturally, goes to Dick Cheney’s company, and which means, of course, that they will see he gets his cut once he is out of office for a while).

Always, those in power scare us with words like “socialism” and “nationalized,” words left over from the Red-scare to keep us from looking at the truth about our society. The chief function of a government is, to me, to secure our liberties and keep us free from attack, both without and within. But capitalism must be regulated to keep us from attack within; otherwise you are turning society over to the predators and thieves. And certain things are essential to socialize: education and health, for starters. These are just two of the things that should not be run by the profit motive, indeed, cannot be so run. There are other requirements of living the good life that do not lend themselves, or should not be, to satisfaction by profit-seeking people. There is a Biblical saying that the poor will always be with us; so, too, will the rich. But they have to be regulated. We cannot expect people whose only aim is their own wealth and power to do what is right, or even best, for the people as a whole.

Now, for the financial crisis: The government will probably bail out the wealthy people who got us into this mess because of their greed. A basic tenet of behavioral science is, reward the behavior you want, don’t reward behavior you don’t want. I don’t think we ought to reward the behavior of the financial institutions, and their executives, who got us into the mess. I know not doing so will have enormous consequences to society as a whole (or so they tell us, and they’re probably right). My personal view is that we should spend the 700 billion by pumping it into the economy where it will do some good, and help the people who will be, and are, most hurt by this huge failure of our leaders.

For starters, we could double the FDIC account protection to $200,000; help the hapless home owner caught up in this terrible housing mess; strengthen Social Security so the benefits will be there for all poor baby boomers who have been deluded into thinking 401ks are truly a safe way to provide for your old age; put more money into schools and spend money on public projects to provide work for the unemployed; and lengthen the term for unemployment benefits. And, for God’s sake, really regulate the foxes that are in charge of our chicken coops.

It’s a bad, bad sign that the gap between the rich and poor has continued to widen in this country, as if we’re a banana republic. It is not true that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country, not when the worker making the cars cannot afford to by one (and, by the way, look at the mess General Motors is in; another case of greed running a corporation. Remember when they made cars built to obsolesce in three years. Thank God for the Japanese, who taught them, though they really haven’t learned the lesson, to make cars that are economical and that last more than a half dozen years). And while I’m on it, we’ve got to stop being so totally a society of consumers; There are other things in life than just material goods. The trouble with consumerism is that enough is never enough; let’s start appreciating some of the more important things in life, our families, culture, personal growth, and, yes, even a more spiritual life.

ALCOHOLISM

Probably the most difficult thing to accept about this disease is that it is a disease, and that the person who has it is powerless over his or her alcoholism. Which is not to say that an alcoholic cannot stop drinking, some for the remainder of their lives. But it does not mean that are not an alcoholic and will continue to suffer if they do not do something to recover from the disease. The recovery will never be perfect, but one can obtain happiness and serenity in sobriety, and the capacity for rebuilding the relationships they have destroyed; and, most importantly, grow up. No truer statement has been made than the mind and mood altering drugs inhibit maturation. Which is why, if one has been drinking for any number of years, the emotional development of that person has also been retarded. That's why not drinking alone does not mean recover from the worst effects of the disease itself. And perhaps one of the most terrible things about the disease is that it tells us we don't have a disease. And this includes those who may have an intimate relationship with the alcoholic. For its number one sympton is denial. Both the alcoholic and those intimate with the alcoholic. And, even worse, by the time the person and/or those around him or her have come to realize that something is terribly wrong with them, and the damage they do is almost beyond repair, the alcoholic is virtually powerless to do anything about it on their own. And even with professional help they will not succeed in regaining their sobriety until they feel utterly defeated by the disease and surrender their will to a god of their understanding, however feeble that might be.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID

One of the things that attracted me about writing was that it seemed possible to have one's works known, and thus reach others with one's thoughts and feelings, without sacrificing one's personal privacy.

Alas, that is far from true, especialy today. To have one's works become known, one has to jump up an down in the crowd, shouting, "Over here. Look at me, Mom. Here I am. Look, look what I can do."

Some writers have always down that, and not always the most talented: Hemingway, Capote, Mailer, and Gertrude Stein, to name a few. Hemingway and Capote were alcoholics and never became adults; Mailer thought he was a novelist, but he can't create character; Stein said and wrote a few brilliant lines and stories, but the most of the rest of her stuff is top of the head babel.

Most of the rest of them have been unknown, until "discovered" by someone: Poe, Melville, Rimbaud, just to mention a few without giving it much thought. I admire most the people who simply write, and do the minimum required for self-publicity, authors like Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner (who was out of print in 1947 until Malcolm Cowley wrote his famous forward to a collection of Faulkner's work), Ian McEwen, whose not best novel, Saturday, finally received attention, and brought him the fame he deserved; Muriel Spark, whose outstanding first short story brought her attention, but who, at the end of her life, would still ask her admirers to "buy" my books; Thomas Mann is my ideal: impervious outside, the artist hidden inside. I don't like people to know me, to know all the clutter and strangeness that makes up an intellectual, neurotic, alcoholic, and artist; I reveal myself in my books. There is where I want you to find me.

GOD

Man invents God in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it. - Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

In all my readings on this subject, I have yet to read someone who points out that we are the sum of all living creation on Earth. I early read, and was taken by, the sentence that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Which, of course, basically means that the development of the individual from its development as a fertilized egg to its birth as an individual capable of living outside the womb or egg, repeats the development of that species as a whole.

I'd like to suggest that we carry within us, in the structure of our genes especially, the whole development of the human race. Religion, I believe, is an attempt to retain that early awe of the universe and the need to make sense of it that, I think, is endemic to the human condition.

Of course, it is obvious that Man created God out of need, primarily to answer the question of meaning and morals; and, of course, out of fear of death. The truth, however, is that there are no meaning or morals in the universe (or God, if you will); they are needs of man, which we invented as we invented God, to get out of what is essentially an existential dilemna, namely what I have asserted. Meaning and morals have been of great evolutionary assistance to us, and have, indeed, not only helped us to survive, but to dominate, at least on the Earth. Which, of course, we are now also rapidly destroying.

To put it another way, the left-brain activity of science and its emphasis developed so strongly from its initiation (if we overlook the ancient Greeks and some of he medievalists like Roger Bacon) by Galeleo and Kepler (that is, the measuring of hypotheses against reality) that we have indeed conquered the world with our thining; until, today (and beginning, actually, 100 and some years ago) there is an uneasiness with that exclusive dominion.

As a result, there began the efforts to rely more on right-brain activity. A book could be written on all the activies, such as Zen Buddhism (but not exclusive to religion; consider Woodstock, for example, and the proliferations of people on TV and video who are quite prepared to tell us how to live more fulfilling lives and achieve happiness and success), and attempts to get "in touch with" the irrational or creative side of life (i.e., the right brain).

Of course, they're right. It's pretty obvious that to believe in complete rationality is in itself pretty irrational. I try to keep in mind what Hamlet said to Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in all your philosophies." And in those days, keep in mind, natural philosophy meant science. I'm a very rational person myself, or so I consider myself, but I've had at least a half dozen experiences that one could call "supernatural." That is to say, strange, or unexplained. Though even there the left brain sets to work in an attempt to explain them. I have theories of my own. But Hamlet is stll right.

MORALITY

"The recognition of the identity of our own nature with that of others is the beginning and foundation of all true morality." - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (from the translators preface)

COURAGE

"There is always a parenthesis of fear in courage." Grapevine, April 1977

WRITERS AND WRITING

"The most important quality of a writer is not talent but persistence." Philip Freund

This is from "Mrs. Virginia Woolf" in Cynthia Ozick's What Henry James Knew and Other Essays on Writers. "A writer's heroism is in the act of writing; not in the finished work, but in the work as it goes."

"You have to write every day of your life because, once you stop, it's damned hard to start again." W. Somerset Maugham, as quoted on p.49 of the
Authors Guild Bulletin, Winter, 2007

RELIGION

Most of us are familiar, I'm sure, with the quotation of Karl Marx that religion "is the opium of the people," which I think is true enough; but the sentence that follows it is, perhaps, even more significant: "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness." Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I find it interesting that three of the men who had the greatest ideological impact on the 20th century were Jews. Sigmund Freud caused a profound shift in the way we view our inner world; Albert Einstein caused a profound shift in the way we view the universe; Karl Marx caused a profound shift in the way we view our governmental structures. I very much admire the way the Jews stress education, learning, thinking, and communication skills. If only the rest of us did the same, we would be living in a much better world. It's interesting, too, I think, that all three of these men were Germans who were forced to leave their own country to fully develop their ideas and, of course, their lives. Also, and this is very important, they were all apostate Jews, freethinkers, who none of them believed in God. Though Religion has tried to claim Einstein as a believer because of his use of the word God. Though his view of God would hardly pass muster in any of the world's key religions.

TIME/ENERGY

I've concluded that we live in an energy/time continuum, similar to the space/time continuum of relativity. The more energy you have, the more time you have. One of the reasons for this is that we measure time by movement, and the more energy the more movement.

Children, for example, have boundless energy, and time, therefore, moves slowly. Do you remember how, as a child, time seemed to be endless? Those two hours or so after school seemed like endless playtime; and when you were called in to supper, you had been playing forever.

Old folks like myself, on the other hand, have boundless fatigue. Because there is so little energy, and therefore so little movement, time speeds up. It speeds up as we get older, passing faster and faster as our energy gradually depletes.

There is, of course, also the psychological factor: With more time behind us, we take the longer view, so that the present seems less and less by comparison to the lengthening past. It is interesting how time and space shrink. To look back to the time of Christ, for instance, and be able to vizualize how few generations ago that was. I read in estimate recently that all of human history is only 5,000 generations.

We, who have lived 50 or more years (in my case, 84) gain more and more perspective. Everything seems so much smaller (the earth especially), and we (I am) are amazed at how far we have developed as a species. Is it any wonder that we are still savages, with all their traits? Only social development (which depends upon individual development) will unltimately make wars less probable, initially through a world federation of some kind.

To control violence, the savage in us, it will be many eons beyond that before it will have lost any possible evolutionary value it might have had. One of the problems with the Middle East is that they are still so tribal, and haven't yet evolved beyond that. Anyhow, that's just a few thoughts on this matter.

The awful thing about death is its finality; the awful thing about aging is its inexorability.

WIFE DIED

My wife Ruth died at 5:05 in the morning on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 of respiratory failure. She had terrible cancer at the end but had had heart failure for almost four years, and I believe it was the heart failure that finally filled her lungs with water. My son Joe was with her at the end; she called out twice, he held her hand, and that was it. She was 90% of my reason for living, so it's going to be tough to continue; I have so little will to live left. But I shall take it a day at a time, believing that it will gradually get better.

It has been a full year since my wife Ruth died, and suddenly I have begun working on my writing again. The grieving must be physiological as well as mental and emotional, for why would it be exactly a year, as many cultures predict? For example, the Jews wait until after a full year of mourning before erecting a headstone; in many societies the woman is required to wear black for a year; and it is recommended that the bereaved one does not remarry until a year has passed. I had faith that I would write again, and just waited patiently for the time to come. I was willing to accept the fact that I might never write again; for every time I tried, the will, the motivation, and the ability were not there. Thank God I feel whole again.

The above statement proved to be false. Until the weekend of Feb. 24, 2008, when I, finally, was able o add four pages to my mss. of John Adams. I hope, this time, it was not a hoax. I expect this weekend following to be able to write. We'll see.

One thing I'd like to mention in connection with Ruth's death: the absolute absence of fear. In fact, she almost embraced death. And she, like myself, had no expectation of an after-life (in facts that is one of the sillier aspects of many religions, and an obvious reason, or one of the reasons, for their invention.

In pondering her fearless death, over four years of heart failure, with the addiion of cancer of the tongue and jaw in her last 6 months, I have come to the conclusion that it is the ego that is afraid to die. Ruth had low ego and high self-esteem. We made a good match because I was just the reverse. Fortnately, as my ego came down and my self-esteem rose (not too much in both cases), her ego rose and her self-esteem dipped a little (but not too much).

Socrates said, "If you would discourse with me, define your terms." So let me define mine. As I have used them, ego is what we think of ourselves; self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves. To put it in more vulgar terminology, what I sometimes tell others is that, when younger, "I thought I was hot shit, but I felt like plain shit." There, are you satisfied?

There were three death scenes before Ruth finally died. If you wish, I shall comment on them the next time I decide to edit this column.

By the way, Ruth donated her body to the Medical School at Stony Brook University, and I have done the same. Her ashes were returned in April of last year, and they now sit on a low bookcase outside what was her bedroom. I am thinking of buying an urn for them.

SOME FEW ODD BOOKS I HAVE ENJOYED

THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer. What a wonderful little book. It's about the fanatic. Hoffer was a stevedore, I understand, who published this one book when he was in his sixties. But I would guess he had made notes on the subject for years, and finally, after much reflection, finally published them.

VALUES IN A UNIVERSE OF CHANCE: Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), Edited by Philip P. Wiener and published by DoubledayAnchor in 1958 is an important book for me in as much as the philosophical values and beliefs it contains are pretty much those I also have come to after much reading of philosophy.

The first 50 pages of A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes, the part that takes place on the island before the kids leave withs the pirates.

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. Such a marvelous sense of humor. Too bad that, turned down by 8 publishers, he committed suicide. His mother, who is marvelously caricatured in the novel, persisted and got it published after his death.

CARDS OF IDENTITY by Nigel Dennis. Wonderful spoof on Communism and the Church of England in the 50s. Probably out of date now.

THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND by Julian Jaynes. Such a seminal book for me! I always wondered why history only began about 4000 BC; this book answers the question -- at least to my satisfaction.

HUNGER

It's a strange thing about hunger when you're old; you don't really feel hunger, you just feel sick, and know it is time to eat, to relieve that sick feeling.

BODIES LIKE LEAD

Their bodies are like lead. (Line from "Old Folks," one of the songs in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, translated by Eric Blau)

This heaviness of the body is a true phonomemon of aging. The body, indeed, does feel like lead. It is so hard to move it at times; I suppose because all our muscles are atrophying. You might have wished at times when you were young, that you could be so relaxed. But this is strange. I have reached the "Help me, I can't get up stage." Need something to cling to to pull myself up, or need someone to lift me. It happened the other evening. The younger person was truly surprised that I was so heavy (because I couldn't use my own muscles to help him lift). Ah, well...aging! And lately, because the blood pressure sometimes gets too low (either that or too high), and I collapse, like the twin towers in NYC. The legs just won't hold me up and I go down. Faint only for a second just before my head hits the ground. So far, no damage.

THE ACADEMIC

The academic parades his knowledge as thought;
but of course it isn't.

WAITING

They sit at a table waiting, in the shadows at the edge of the woods, waiting, Socrates, Freud, Tolstoy, and Mann - and others I can't quite make out.

WORK IN PROGRESS

John Adams, Architect of Freedom. A Brief Life for the Busy Reader. Should run about 45,000 words; expect to have it published by the end of 2007, or early in the new year (unfortunately, the death of my wife made it impossible for me to write for a year and a half), in time to capitalize on any interest generated by the NMO 6-part series on John Adams, based on McCullough's book, which now has been sechuled to begin on March 16, 2008. Too bad; the earliest I could possibly have my book out would probably be in June.

OLD AGE

I have finally reached the age (7/28/08) when I know the meaning of the phrase "bag 'o bones." I am surprised that at last the bones in the body have come into their own and make us aware of them. Of all the parts of the body, I am now most aware of the bones. They are heavy, and fill the skin. And they ache after a night of sleep. I hear you, bones, I feel you. We will sleep soon enough.

This long decay and dying we call old age can, at times, be quite depressing. The world we knew dissociates from us, and we, it is becoming quite apparent, must die alone. No one can do it for us; each of our dyings, for that reason, is quite unique.

SMELLY OLD FOLKS

I've discovered why the faeces and urine of old folks stinks so much. It's because the kidney loses its capacity to excrude all the toxins in the body. I have been able to correct this by using Verseo Foot Patches, which removes toxins through the soles of your feet while you sleep. Lightens color of faeces and urine, and eliminates the awful odor. Pass it on.

I happen to be rereading the Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy, a poet I remember admiring very much, and came upon this, a poem of his youth, which, seeing the old from the outside, illustrates my axiom below that no one can understand the old except the old.

THE SOULS OF OLD MEN

Inside their worn, tattered bodies
dwell the souls of old men.
How unhappy the poor things are
and how bored by the pathetic life they live.
How they tremble for fear of losing that life, and how much
they love it, those befuffled and contradictory souls, sitting -- half comic and half tragic --
inside their old, threadbare skins.

(He's projecting, of course. But nice anyhow, isn't it?)

Old age is something else. A whole new country. Until you get there, you will not understand it. Too many books about old age are written by people in their 60s; and they ain't seen nothing yet. The central key to old age, and its understanding, is energy, the lack thereof. From that pretty much all else ensues. Most writers about old age focus on the symptons, the loss of sexuality, of appetite (not everyone loses this), the ills that flow from the body's inabiliy to fight germs. Old age is a time of decay, but most people focus on the physical, and either ignore, are not ware of, the mental decay. We are like old machines that are wearing out. The wonder is that the body was able to repair itself for so many years. And so the end comes, not with a bang (in most cases), but with a whimper. And that's what old age is, a preparation for dying. And the final acceptance, the final letting go. As Bette Davis said at 92, though I'm sure it was not original with her, "Old age ain't for sissies." And what is most frightening is its inexorability. There is no cure for old age, but death. I don't believe in a life after death (certainly not the survival of the ego), but I agree with Socrates, when he said, in essence, If there is a life after death, why worry? If there is no life after death, why worry?

Old age, basically, is just a slow dying. The nice thing about it is that it gives you a chance to adjust to the idea of your obliteration.

The major sympton of old age is fatigue (loss of energy), but another major sympton is chronic pain. Due mainly, I assume, to the fact that the body is just wearing out, especially the joints.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

The most important thing is this moment, not some day in the future. -- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

The truth is, this moment is all there is; everything else, including the past and the future, is a mental construct.

There is no "them"; there is only "us".

The real battle in this country is between the idealists and the materialists. Between the people who want to live in a better world, and those who just want to live in a better gated community. Between the universalists and the fundamentalists.

The following quote is from The Gospel of Thomas, as translated by George McRae. It can be found on p.32 of Pagels' "Beyond Belief." At my stage of development, I find it quite interesting and profound. Any comments?

"Jesus said: 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Here's another quote from the Pagel's book, p. 57, from "the Book of Thomas the Contender, another ancient book belonging to Syrian Thomas tradition discovered at Nag Hammadi."

"Whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously come to know the depth of all things."

Socrates, of course, said the highest wisdom is to know thyself. I have always believed this.

Socrates also said:

He is wise who knows he knows not.

If you would discourse with me, define your terms.

Tolstoy said:

In me is the germ of all human qualities.

This, too, I believe.

QUOTATIONS

I love Truth...very much...I love Truth. - Leo Tolstoy, on his deathbed.

All truth is good, but not all truth is good to say. - African Proverb

Each person carries within himself the world in which he must live. From the June 1981 Grapevine

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These novellas were later included in "The Night Billy Was Born and Other Love Stories." Privately printed by author in limited edition. Few copies available. Paperback, 102 pages. Signed by author. Order from Amazon.com, books, Joseph Cowley, used copy that says signed by author. Price, $20, which includes shipping and handling if ordered from author via email. No credit cards if ordered from author.

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Signed copies of any of the author's books in print are available at Amazon.com. Click on the Signed Copies Link in the column to the right and, after you get to Amazon.com, click on "Books," type in Joseph Cowley, and hit "Go." When you find the book you want, click on "Used Copies" and then on the copy that is marked as "Signed by Author." Amazon.com will then inform me of your desire for an autographed copy of the book. If you'd like me to inscribe a short message (though my handwriting's unreadable), let me know what it is via email.

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In the words of a classical music performance, a "lollypop" is a short bit of fluff played to close out a concert. In this case, it's an unpublished story and an article, a bit of a spoof called "Understanding Poetry." First, the story:

THY WILL BE DONE

It would be the perfect crime. The perfect murder. An act of nature, of God, really. Perfectly divine punishment. Guilty, she glanced at her father in the passenger seat, wondering if he could sense her thoughts.
He was hunched forward, oblivious, studying the Amish countryside. They had turned off the highway some miles back, the lowering sun glinting for a moment in her rear view mirror as she made the turn southward toward the Appalachian hills where she and Cecil had established a homestead.
Maybe “homestead” was too fancy a word for it. “Research station” might be better. They had purchased the twenty acres two years before, mainly for Cecil, who taught scientific farming at the University in Athens, in southeast Ohio. His doctoral thesis was on hardscrabble farming--that is, how to improve the productivity of poor soils in the poverty regions of the world, and Appalachia was an excellent place to test some of his ideas.
The sun, still above the trees, shone through the side window of the car, giving her father an aura of “saintliness.” Though she knew better. Almost eighty, he looked frail. He hadn’t been a good father. Doting if he had his way, brutal, even cruel, if not. But always dominating, her whole life long, her mother, her sister, all of them. Whether he had forgiven her for marrying Cecil she didn’t know. She hated and loved him.
At the small crossroads hamlet of Unity, where the small general store that served the local Amish was the only sign the hamlet even existed, she made a sharp, ninety-degree left turn on the narrow, macadam road. In the rearview mirror she saw the sun settling into the trees. Soon they would reach the dirt road that ran south into the hills. Passing the occasional farm, her father, rapt, studied them, swiveling his head as each disappeared.
“You can tell which ones are the Amish,” she said, her voice startling them after the miles of silence. “There are no cars in their drive, and they don’t use electricity.” Her father was silent. “They don’t believe in them.”
“Jesus,” he said. “In this day and age.”
He himself had always used the latest scientific advances to advance his business, injection molding. He got a job in plastics shortly after high school and, after ten years of experience, came up with an idea of his own and started his own firm. He had made a fortune. Today it was almost completely computerized. Except for a handful in administration, marketing, finance, and engineering, all it required was cheap labor to watch the dials.
That was where the bind was. His competitors were moving their plants overseas and he was caught in an increasing cost-price squeeze. Unable to let go of the business (he had never had sons and neither her older sister Beth nor she wanted anything to do with it), he worried the problem to death, like a bulldog that can’t let go of something once it has sunk its teeth into it. That was his strength--and his weakness.
She could read him like a book, using the lure of cheap labor to get him to make his first visit since they had moved here some two years before. Something Beth said when she was home this last time made it necessary. Their father was always their major topic of conversation. Beth lived for him, had dropped out of college to take care of him after their mother died. What Beth said was that their father was thinking of changing his will.
The panic she felt surprised her. It was then she knew something had to be done; she had put up with too much of his abuse over the years to lose her inheritance now. The thought of the dysentery a friend from college had suffered when he visited them the year they moved to Appalachia popped into her head. He had made the mistake of drinking the tap water in the barn; they should have warned him but forgot. He almost died.
They thought it was a stomach virus. When it hadn’t cleared up after four days they took him to the doctor, who said it was most likely dysentery. He had them rush him to the hospital in Cincinnati. Their friend was severely dehydrated, his blood pressure dangerously low, and his renal system had shut down. The build-up of toxins in his system might have killed a lesser man, someone older or frailer, or not in the best of health.
Her father said something, but she hadn’t been listening. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to need a response. She turned south onto the dirt road that led into the hills, the land still relatively flat, still good for farming. In another mile the road would drop steeply into a tunnel of trees, and they would be in Appalachia, a land of green, rolling hills and dark valleys, land too poor for farming and only sparsely inhabited.
“Dumb asses,” her father added. “No wonder they’re so poor.”
“Not all of them are poor,” she said. “Some are quite wealthy.”
He swiveled his head to look at her, not sure he should believe her.
“Then where is all this cheap labor you’ve been telling me about?”
“Adams County is one of the three poorest counties in the state. The unemployment rate has been running above twenty percent for years. You can get all the labor you want for minimum wage. Add a dollar or two and you’ll have the cream of the crop. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
His eyes glinted. He didn’t like anyone telling him what was in his mind, especially his daughters, and especially this one. Beth was more submissive, like her mother; this one too much like himself. A thorn in his side she was, always willful and disobedient. They had been at odds ever since she was a child. At fifteen she ran away from home; after that she made it clear she couldn’t wait to get away to college.
But not the college he chose for her. He had wanted his daughters to become cultured, and ladies, and to marry well. Beth went to Swarthmore, but this one insisted on Cornell. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she majored in political science, a useless kind of subject, then switched to sociology, an even more useless field of study, when she stayed on for the PhD. Her dissertation was on rural poverty, a subject she chose, he was sure, to spite him and show her contempt for the values he had tried to imbue her with.
Their common interest in poverty made it inevitable that she and Cecil should meet. He was enrolled in the School of Agriculture, working for a PhD in scientific farming. Having grown up on a small farm outside of Albany that never provided more than a hard-scrabble living for his parents, his interest in poverty was understandable. But hers? It made no sense.
“Jesus!” he said. “Where’s the money to be made in poverty. Study the wealthy if you want to get rich. Who gives a shit about the poor?”
When she announced that she and Cecil were getting married, it was the last straw. That’s when he gave up on her. Disgusted, he said, “Do whatever the hell you want. You always have. But don’t think you’re going to do it on my money! I’ll be damned if I’ll subsidize your poverty.”
He had worked too hard to earn his money. His first wife cleaned houses for a living while he toiled in the plastics plant sixty hours a week to save enough to climb out of poverty. Unfortunately, she died two years after they started the business. From overwork, it was said, though others have hinted he drove her to her death. Two years later he married a woman from the moneyed class who divorced him after little more than a year.
Their mother was his third wife. She was twenty years younger than he, a meek woman in her thirties at the time he married her, who suffered his abuse without ever saying a word against him for the more than two decades they were married. She developed pancreatic cancer in her fifties. Beth dropped out of Swarthmore to take care of her, and when she died six months later never went back. She said their father needed her. He agreed.
Coming to the end of the farm land, she pointed to some cleared land on their right and said, “Those seven acres are ours. The building in the middle is a kiln for curing lumber. The large barn’s for storing the lumber, the small one’s a tool shed. Cecil keeps his tractor there. We may try lumbering again after he finishes some of his other projects.”
Before her father could reply, the car dropped precipitously into the tunnel of trees. After a hundred feet or so, she turned sharply up a steep drive and stopped the car near a large corrugated steel building that hung over the hill on the left. She said it was their garage. Ahead of them a ranch house, with a picture window and a screened-in porch, was dug into the side of the hill. In front of them the hills of Appalachia stretched to the horizon.
“That last hill you can see on the horizon is Kentucky,” she said.
“It’s a gorgeous view,” he said. “Too bad you can’t package and sell it. It’s the only way you’ll ever make any money out of a place like this.”
When they got out, Cecil, a small, frail-looking figure at the base of the hill, looked up and waved. He was filling a small pond he had carved out at the base of the hill with water from a hose. She waved back.
“He’s going to try growing rice in that pond,” she said. “We have two larger ponds, back in the woods, stocked with fish. Bass, mostly.”
Pointing to the terraces along the side of the hill, her father said, “Jesus, it must have been some job building those.”
“We had someone do those for us,” she said. “It took heavy equipment. Cecil’s growing fruit trees on some of the terraces, and grape vines. We hope to make our own wine in a few years. I have a small garden behind the house. I’ll show you around the place tomorrow.”
“When are we going to see the real estate agents?”
“I thought we might do that Tuesday. The nearest mall is twenty miles away, but I’m sure there’ll be real estate agents there who can tell you about possible plant sites, taxes, the employment situation, that sort of thing.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a building beyond the house.
“Our barn,” she said. “I’ve fixed it up as a studio for myself, with a computer and bookshelves, a small kitchenette, and a lounge area for TV. We don’t keep a set in the house. There’s a bedroom in the back we use for guests. I thought you might sleep there. It will give you more privacy.”
She took his bag and he followed her into the barn.
II
It turned out, of course, exactly as she had planned. As she showed him about the barn, she opened the refrigerator to make sure Cecil had removed the bottled water. She also put a glass in the bathroom, for his toothbrush she said, but actually to make sure he drank from the tap when he got up during the night, as Beth said he did, his mouth dry from snoring.
She sat watching television with him for an hour that evening after supper, and the next day showed him around their twenty acres--the two fish ponds, the garden where she grew vegetables and flowers for the house, and the seven acres and kiln on the flat land above the trees behind them. It was the next morning, after midnight, that he got sick. She could smell the mess when she went in that morning. It had been coming out both ends.
“I thought it was food poisoning at first,” he said weakly. He was lying on the sofa near the bathroom, his face white. “I could taste the piece of fat from one of the pork chops Cecil cooked when I first felt nauseous. Then I remembered that food poisoning always occurs within the first two hours of eating, and at least four or five hours had gone by since I ate. That’s when I knew it must be a virus. Sorry about the mess I’ve made.”
“That’s all right, Dad,” she said. “I’ll clean it up. No problem. But I think we’d better get you to the doctor. What do you say?”
“No, no,” he said. “It’s just a stomach virus. I must have picked it up on the plane. One of those twenty-four hour things. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
He, of course, had no interest in food, and she left him alone most of the day, only looking in on occasion to see if he needed anything. But he hated her fussing over him and waved her away. Suggesting he see the doctor only got his back up. She knew he wouldn’t take advice from her. By the fourth day he was pretty weak and finally let her and Cecil bundled him into the car and drive him to the hospital in Cincinnati.
It was, of course, too late. He died shortly after admission. They told the doctors about his diarrhea and said they thought it was dysentery, though they kept bottled water in the refrigerator and told him not to drink water from the tap. Her father never would do anything she told him to do, she explained. The doctors agreed that it was dysentery, but said the actual cause of death was failure of the heart, due to the stress of the toxins.
Later, when she called her sister, Beth wept inconsolably. Finally calm, but still sniffling, she said, “He was going to change his will.”
“I know,” she said coolly. “You told me.”
“Yes,” Beth said, “he was going to put you back in.”
And she began again to sob uncontrollably.

UNDERSTANDING POETRY

Symolism in Mother Goose


One of the difficulies in reading poetry, especially modern poetry, it is generally agreed, lies in its rich use of symolism. Each line, each word, is made to carry a weiht of meaning that goes for beyond the obvious. But this should not deter the serious seeker after beauty.

A good poem is meant not only to be read, but to be re-read. "Meaning lies layered in petals of beauty," as the famous line from Wordsworth has it. With each reading a good poem unveils itself like a shy woman, until we are to the inner core of her beauty and meaning.

Symbolism, however, is not a new phenomenon, as we shall see in the exegesis that follows. In it we will attempt to heighten (perhaps even arouse for the first time) your awareness and appreciation of the time-honored grace (in the largest sense of that word) that can be found in a few simple lines, beauteously wrought, penned by the world's greatest lyric poets.

The selection we have chosen is from the collected works of Mother Goose. It is entitled:

LITTLE MISS MUFFIT

Little Miss Muffit
Sat on a tuffit
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffit away.

There is, of course, much that is obvious in this little poem. The author has cleverly made us aware, right from the start, by means of his (or rather, her) title and first line, that we are dealing with a woman -- a shy, frightened, little woman, who is single and alone. Like the opening of a Beethoven symphony, the Freudian overtones go ringing down the corridors of time right from the start.

Who is this mysterious woman? Why should she be eating alone? Why should a mere spider frighten her? These are significant questions, as we shall see as we undertake, line by line, our textual exegesis. Or, to quote Shakespeare, "there is more her than meets the eye." (Whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote that line is another question which we won't get into right now. Mainly because some of our readers might not feel Bacon is kosher). Instead...let us reason together over that first line:

"Little Miss Muffit"

As we mentioned (cf. pp. 4, or maybe 5), this opening line highlights one of the main points of the poem: we are dealing with a "little" woman. Some critics have tried to claim this is a steal from Louisa May Alcott, others that it's merely a slip of the pen (but very Freudian), still others that it's a translator's error. But however it's translated, we become aware, very quickly, that the poem deals with a sex-starved, ultimately rather prim (it turns out) young lady who is not married.

Could it be, as the line so generously suggests, that she missed "it"? You may want to quarrel with this interpretation, but what is it a young lady coming into full flower is most likely to miss? And to miss it means she must have known it, which casts doubt on her virginity. However, the line goes on to hint, via her very name, that, somehow, she "muffed" it. Is she doomed to miss out on it, to continually muff it? As readers, our sympathies are immediately aroused. A male reader will want to soothe and comfort her, a female reader to straighten her out. The big question is, was this poem written before the days of the pill? If so, doesn't the whole question become anachronistic? Perhaps. But we can'be be sure. Let's go on to the second line...
"Sat on a tuffit"

The first question what is likely to spring to mind when you read this line is: What is a tuffit? But, then, there are secondary questions. Why did she sit on it? Is it customary to sit on tuffits? Or, if you will glance for a moment at the third line, should "curds" have been spelled with a "t" and "tuffit" with a "c"? This would reduce it to the level of a simple printer's error and indicate that the author was too cheap to pay for an AA (Author's Alteration). If so, do we see sother evidence of cheapness in the poem?

Next, of course, we become aware of the very obvious play on words. The author is saying that the "it", whatever it is, is tough -- perhaps too tough for a frightened, shy, little girl. And in a secondary sense, he is also expressing his sympathy fo her by implying that what happened to her is "tough titty".

Immediately, we want to cry out: Is that the clue to the entire poem? There is no question that some childhood trauma is behind it all -- the frightened bedhaviork the pervading sense of anomie, etc. However, the plain truth is that we don't know what happened to her when she was a child, and we shouldn't jump to a conclusion too soon. Instead, let's go on to the third line, which is also wrought with an overpowering symbolism.

"Eating her curds and whey"

We are dealing here, as we at last find out, with a compulsive eater. And this bolsters, of course, our theory o the childhood trauma. It also tells us why she is eating alone. She is ingesting food on the sly because, unconsciously, food has sexual significance for her. It is not only a mother substitute, a cry for love, but in particular it is a cry for sexual love. In Freudian terms, to quote from "The State of Anxiety," she wished she were pregnant.

She is, therefore, a poor, love-starved, sex-starved girl -- little (and also a little fat which the author doesn't come right out and tell us, but which we can guess from the circumstances of the activity) and lonely. Again, our sympathies are aroused. We wonder, is this poem to be a tragedy or a comedy? Our interest has been heightened and we wonder what will happen next. But before we go on, let's take a look at wha she is eating -- "curds and whey."

Like most readers, your reaction is likely to be one of disgust. Even if you don't know what "curds" are, the very sound of the word indicates the level to which this poor, unfortunate girl has sunk ("whey" down, as the author makes explicit). She is also poor, it is clear, if she is reduced to eating such food -- perhaps desperately poor, which not only adds to her plight, but increases our understanding and sympathy.

She needs help, and not just psychiatric help (the rule is the body first, then the mind). For we must first feel those we would help (I meant, of course, "feed," not "feel" -- that was a slip. But I will not expunge the error, for it was suggested by the poem itself, which is a point I want to make at the end of this article: If we expose ourselves to pornographic filth, we can't help but be corrupted by it.).

Before we leave the second line of the poem, I would be remiss if I did not point out the hippie-Marxist overtones of the word "whey." This girl is obviously "whey" out, as the author makes fairly explicit. The question left unanswered, however, is this: Is she a member of the radical left, or merely a dupe? We are never told, for example, what clothes she is wearing: could it be she is stark naked? But perhaps the thought of a naked fat woman is too weighty an idea for this simple poem to bare (another slip, of course).

Egad, with slips like that you might think I'm going to pot! Actually, of course, as any who knows me can testify, I haven't had any pot. The question is, has Miss Muffit? One certainly can wonder. Certainly that would put her "whey" out. Though we can never be sure, it is these little doubts and ambiguities that lend richness to the writing that is of the first magnitude. The author is demanding that we throw ourselves into the poem, bring something of our own to it. This, therefore, is a question you, the reader, must decide. But, then, no great work is necessarily easy to read. However, the rewards are great for those who struggle through, as we must now do.

"Along came a spider"

We know right off the bat, of course, that this is no spider. For spiders don't "come along." They drop down on silken skeins (gossamer, usually). But if not a spider, what? Do the many legs symbolize the many arms of love thast Miss Muffit cries out for? And yet can't accept when they finally arrive (because they are hairy, perhaps?). The meaning here is particularly difficult to unravel. Like Miss Muffit, we find ourselves in a frightening jungle, a nightmare world of menacing creatures who symbolize our childhood terrors.

The question is, did Miss Muffit, as a baby in her crib, actually see something hairy (her mother and father making love, perhaps) that frightened her? Critics have argued this point, some of them unkind enough to suggest that Miss Muffit didn't have parents (in the normal sense of the word). But that's neither here nor there, and certainly doesn't negate ou central point -- mainly, that we're dealing with a very serious case of arrested development.

Miss Muffit may have all the accoutrements of a normal, well-developed young lady, but her emotions (especially her sexual feelings) are obviously those of a child. Our own pity for her at this point is probably excruciatingly painful. We wish her the best, we would like to reach out and help her, but we don't know how. It is this feeling which prepares us for the sad, the tragic, ending, we now realize is in store for her -- and for us as readers of this enthralling poem.

But, like the fake spider, let's "come along" to the next line, where the nightmarish terror finally erupts into a plangent expression of hopeless despair as this hairy, outwardly sexy (fiendishly so) beast moves in for what we anticipate will be the rape scene (but which our author mercifully spares us). Many women of faint heart have been known to put the poem down at this point, unable, understandably, to go on.

"And sat down beside her"

This, of course, was very clever of the spider (but as older, more mature we immediately sense what he is up to and what he has on his mind). "Thank God," we exclaim, that Miss Muffit, for all her tender years, comes to her senses in time to avoid the catastrophe. I could not, in all consciousness, recommend this poem to you, regardly of how great it might be, if it were otherwise. But, as I've indicated (see paragraph above), the author spares us, and the spider merely "sits" (in some adult versions of the poem this is not the case) beside her...

"And frightened Miss Muffit away."

The sense of relief we feel as readers is overhwhelming. This, at last, is the denouement. Miss Muffit, despite all her hang-ups (or perhaps because of them), has been saved. And yet (and this is where much of the greatness of the poem lies), at the same time, we feel sad, because we know that while Miss Muffit's maidenhead may have been spared, her maindenhood has not, and she will go on -- lonely, alone, pure, but eating her heart out (and her cupboard), waiting for a not-quite-so-hairy prince to come along and sweep her off her feet (or "tuffit," as we may say in Old English), and wondering, in the deepest sense, whether the spider might not have been her white knight in disguise.

As readers, we are left wondering whether the spider doesn't symbolize all of us -- the beast in us, that is? Are we all as pure as we might like to think we are? Or does there lurk ominously in our dark souls our own spidering beasts, waiting to ravish us (and any young maidens who might be handy)? But, of course, this we will never know, because the author herself never provides the answer. Which is what makes poetry great, and this particular poem a sheer joy to read.