HEAVENLY BODIES

It was June 1962, or maybe October 1963, I’m not really sure but it was definitely in the early 1960s, and I know for sure it was a Sunday. I was safely ensconced in the fourth pew of my Grandmother’s church, bookended by my grandmother on one side and my mother on the other. Just as I was about to take a catnap my grandmother applied her signature pinch to the fleshy underside of my upper arm. Bless her soul if she were alive today I’m willing to bet, as a former Navy Wave, she would be stationed at Guantanamo applying her pinch to elicit information from the detainees. I don’t know if the current administration would consider it torture but 50 years later that pinch still makes an impression on me!

Returning home I asked my father why I had to accompany my mother and grandmother to church while he remained at home to read the Sunday paper. When pressed he gave me his stock answer – “Those of us who don’t sin don’t need to partake.” Right! I often wonder how my father’s placement interview went when he met with St. Peter at the pearly gates.

After nearly 20 years occupying the fourth pew each and every Sunday morning I finally convinced my escorts I was not the spiritual type. Like my father I was willing to give up sin for a lazy Sunday morning. I even had to admit I was a bit of an agnostic, at least I thought I was. Then along came two out of body experiences.

My first real test came with a visit to the Bodies Exhibit. Controversial as it might be the Bodies Exhibit is a real eye opener. Combining elements of science and art the exhibit also plays to your basic prurient interest. All those naked bodies, exposed down to their fundamental building blocks, with not a soul to be found. But what would my grandmother say? In many ways she was pretty much ahead of her time but when it came to matters of the soul she was less willing to roll the dice. But others had plenty to say.

Mike Hendricks argued in the Kansas City Star on March 2, 2008, that the Bodies shows are invaluable exhibits, despite the commonly cited ethical concerns. Hendricks writes, “If anything makes a more compelling argument for the sanctity and dignity of humanity––and does it more tastefully—I haven’t seen it.”

But the question remained – “Does man have a soul?”

One of W. Somerset Maugham's characters tried to end the controversy when he was asked if he had a soul – “I don’t know what you mean by the soul. If you mean an immaterial or spiritual entity, separately produced by the creator, in temporary conjunction with the material body, then my answer is in the negative. It seems to me that such a radically dualistic view of human personality cannot be defended by anyone who is able to take a calm view of the evidence. If on the other hand, you mean by soul the aggregate of psychic elements which form what we know as the personality of the individual, then, of course, I have one.”

Well, it took two visits but I finally came to the conclusion that what I was seeing could not have possibly been the product of chance. Life is complicated enough, to think a living thing like a human body with all its parts fitting together like pieces of a puzzle could be an accident of nature is just too hard to believe. And don’t even get me started on the fetus exhibit!

Then there was the day last week when my soul mate and I walked the beach to the light of the moon, and what a moon it was. Low in the sky, bigger than I had ever seen, bright orange, it traveled the horizon nearly touching the sea. One look at that spectacle and you had to believe in something, anything. Call it what you want but for me it was my grandmother calling to tell me she expected to see me next week in the fourth pew and I might just be there. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera available to capture that image for prosperity but a friend spied this sunset at the North Pole that will light the way.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He...who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead. His eyes are closed."

-Albert Einstein

ON THE EDGE OF NEVER-NEVER LAND

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. I know the feeling. For many years now I thought how wonderful it would be to make my way as a writer. I envisioned sitting at the keyboard, a bottle of Irish Whiskey at hand, soft music playing in the background and my fingers gliding over the keys. But what to write, what style to follow? Not knowing where to start I decided to pick an author of some renown to emulate but every time I settled on one it turned out badly. I should have cheated and read the last chapter of their life story first.

First it was Ernest Hemingway. I read his books, studied his style, read A.E. Hotchner's biography, "Papa Hemingway", flew to Paris to drink in his cafes, traveled to Key West to walk in his steps, fished his favorite spots, and drank copious amounts of Mojitos, but when it came right down to it I was a failure.

As Ernest liked to say, "Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another." I lived, he didn't.

Next I turned the clock back to 1886 settling on Leo Tolstoy. I thought a good Russian would be hard to beat. Little did I know at the time my favorite of Leo's books would be "The Death of Ivan IIyich". Do you sense a pattern here?

I connected with Ivan, his life "had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Ivan didn't fair too well, dying alone in a train station; Leo didn't do much better.

Well, it was clearly time to put some distance between me and death, time to live on the edge and experience life to the fullest. Who better to get crazy with than Hunter S. Thompson, the father of gonzo journalism? I could use a little fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

I settled on Hunter when my muse shared her simple explanation of why she loved me - "Because you are everything I'm not." Hunter and I were like that, he lived for drugs, I'm a pretty straight arrow, missing the 60's as I had. He drank - a lot, I'm a Poland Spring kind of guy. He loved guns, I gave mine away to a pixie. He road motorcycles, I drive a Mercedes (how boring). He enjoyed and wrote about sports, I'm artsy fartsy. But when it came right down to it I realized I was more like Hunter than any of the other writers I had chosen.

I've always liked the idea of living on the edge or at least close to it. I seek out edgy people, counter-cultural types who act and look different than me - people who are everything I'm not. That is probably why Hunter, and even Ivan, appealed to me - they both lived on the edge. Ivan "all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him." Hunter, on the other hand relished life "on the edge...there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

But I wasn't ready to jump, I needed a safety net, a wide stance with one foot firmly planted on each side of the abyss. Hunter chose a mountain top to find his edge.

After all this death I decided to pick a story with a happy ending rather than a specific author. Then it came to me, I would use a fairy tale as inspiration and write my own ending. What better tale than J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up." Sir James, or Jimmy as I called him, felt dreams come true if you wish hard enough but they come at a price. Jimmy once said "You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it." Why not? I was willing to give everything I had to live in Neverland. Is that close enough to the edge for you Hunter?

Off I went to London to trace Jimmy's steps, visiting Peter Pan's statue in Kensington Garden near where Jimmy had lived. Jimmy wasn't fond of the statue because it didn't show the devil in Peter; I could do better, I've got plenty of devil to spare. One look at Peter and I knew immediately this was it, I was the perfect Peter Pan, the little boy who never grew up, and I had my own Tinkerbell to boot; a figment of my imagination to be sure, but she seemed real enough to me. She came to me in a dream ..."that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming." Tink took me to Never-Never land and that is where I will always love her.

Like all good stories this one has an ending that leaves you dangling, waiting for the next chapter. In my version I tried to clip Tink's wings but she flew off without me and I may never see her again. Jimmy's Peter Pan story ends a little differently, the narrator says, "But I was never to see Peter Pan again. Now I tell his story to my children and they will tell it to their children, and so it will go on - for all children grow up .....Except one!

Good night Tink, wherever you are, I will see you in my dreams.

STRAY SHOPPING CARTS REDUX

E.F. Schumacker put it best by saying, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."

Well it seems the book I reviewed in a previous blog post, "Stray Shopping Carts of America", has gotten wide attention. More so now that we are in the middle of a recession. With the republication of "A Simple Life" and everyone seeking a simpler, less expensive, close to home experience, the backyard BBQ has taken on new meaning.

My friends Peter and Dianne have taken the phrase "Back to Nature" to new heights with their custom built BBQ grill, direct from Walmart.

I admit I was a little jealous when they moved from "Taxachusetts" to find freedom in New Hampshire but I never expected them to get this deep into the back to the land movement.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME I'M BEAUTIFUL, I KNOW I AM, BUT THANKS ANYWAY.

It's mating season in south Florida, that odd ritual when old men with wrinkled skin dance in the sun in a vain attempt to attract a female partner.

Tennessee Williams said it best in The Night of the Iguana when he penned these words:

"And intercourse not well designed

For beings of a golden kind

Whose native green must arch above

The earth's obscene corrupting love"

Love is like that, or maybe its just passion but it seems a great deal of energy comes into play selecting a desirable partner. I always assumed, as a male in hot pursuit (formally so after 40 years of marriage) the male of the species was exerting all of the energy in the mating ritual but recent research has shown the mating "dance" is energetically costly for females as well, surprising because this runs counter to conventional scientific wisdom.

Until recently researchers assumed choosiness demands comparatively little exertion from females while males put a great deal of effort into courtship. Just watch any male on the beach as he sidles up to a female, hunches his back and begins to rock back and forth – one would think all that is left for the female is to amble into the males' territory, watch this flamboyant behavior and choose the male they want, while simply avoiding other suitors. Easier said than done!

As it turns out avoiding energetic but unwanted males is in itself exhausting, and often causes the choosiest females to loose as much as 25 %of their body weight. What’s more the longer they spend in the company of the attractive males, the more weight they lose. This new research by Princeton University could be bad news for Jenny Craig.

Take my friend Bruce for example. Bruce is not a Reverend but had he been he surely would have been defrocked like the Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon from the pages of The Night of the Iguana. Bruce is one of those sun baked guys with a very young and very attractive wife. I often wondered what exactly constituted his power of attraction and how his wife maintained such a girlish figure. During a recent visit I spotted the answer, an elegant coffee table book that contained all one needs to know about attracting the opposite sex while exerting the least amount of effort. A combination adventure story, drink compendium, cookbook, and all around how-to-book on all things related to attracting the opposite sex The Iguana Cookbook was a complete surprise.

It seems Iguana meat is considered an aphrodisiac and can be prepared in a variety of interesting ways. If you doubt me check it out yourself at http://www.iguanacookbook.com/

Like any good cookbook The Iguana Cookbook starts with the basics - prepare a drink paired to the dish at hand. In my unscientific test the collection of drink recipes were each tried and determined to be more than suitable to accompany any of the recipes. In fact your humble correspondent would prefer to paraphrase Ogden Nash - “Iguana meat is neat, but liquor is quicker”. For the inexperienced cook the recipes are meticulously explained beginning with the most basic instruction – “First catch the Iguana”. For that you might have to enlist George Cera, the author and renowned Iguana hunter. Seems he has captured over 16,000 in his illustrious career. Then there is the great debate, “Is it a fish?” Great news for Catholics, the Church considers Iguana meat a fish (go figure) so Friday night date night is sanctioned by the Church.

But back to Bruce. Not one to take any chances Bruce has covered all his bases. Not only did he purchase the book, he decided he needed a ready supply of Iguana meat close at hand and like the male of every species he is obsessed with size.

As Bruce would say, "There are worse things than chastity, Reverend Dr. Shannon".

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VINCENT

I’ve decided to forestall any further birthdays. I’m calling a time out, at least for a little while. Its not that I dislike the celebration, cake and ice cream suits me just fine, but the thought of blowing out all those damn candles really freaks me out. Honestly, I’m not obsessed with germs, no hand sanitizer in my house, but can you just picture all those microbes floating over the cream cheese icing, making a bee line straight for the confectionary flower I had marked as my own?

The only smart thing to do is to pick another’s birthday and celebrate. Look at the benefits; you can still have the cake and ice cream, but without the candles, no presents need be opened, you don’t run the risk of re-gifting gone a-muck, and if it is a little belated no great loss, who’s going to complain?

I think a topical series might be fun. Let’s see, maybe we could start with dead poets. If it’s good enough for a movie script it should be good enough for my birthday party. We could move on to mad scientists. There are a few that could use a little celebrating, like Wilhelm Reich; Eisenhower’s secret ally against the aliens. Willy lived not far from here and his force field is still felt to this day but I will leave that for another time; it's dark outside and I’m not in the mood for any late night visitors. After we finish with the scientists we could move on to movie stars. They are always good for a party, dead or alive. Last but not least, I think we could finish up with a few authors. Maine is home to a few, some stranger than others. My friend, Caroline, makes a great corn chowder, (I have her family recipe). I bet I could get her to celebrate with us; she might even bring the militia. What’s a party without some target practice?

OK, so it’s settled - dead poets first. The power went out the other day and I had to scurry around for candles which made me think of one of my favorite poems, this little quatrain titled “First Fig”.

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

In a remarkable moment of serendipity I discovered it was Vincent’s birthday, an omen for sure. Mind you I didn’t know Vincent but she would appreciate my familiarity. With one foot on each side of the aisle she preferred Vincent over Edna. She was that kind of gal. Can't say as I blame her. Vincent is the poetic voice of eternal youth, feminine revolt and liberation, potent sensitivity and suggestiveness all wrapped up in one little package. I have a friend who reminds me of Vincent. Sammie seems just the part, a pixie playing Tinkerbell to my Peter Pan. Even her name is fantasy; it hides the girl behind the fiction of her name. She seems to be saying:

"I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day."

Happy Birthday, Vincent. Edna St. Vincent Millay February 22.

STRAY SHOPPIING CARTS

What a day! What started as a cerebral day commemorating Galileo’s 400th birthday, complete with cake, quickly devolved into trash talk complete with a stunning analysis of the Niagara Falls River Gorge vandalism super site. Wait, more on that later.

We figured Rodney Dangerfield probably had Galileo in mind when he famously said, “I don’t get no respect”. The poor guy had made it through the inquisition, only to have his mistress marry his best friend, and his daughters fled to safety in a nearby convent. Not to let Galileo’s memory escape us and his birthday to pass unrecognized we decided a celebration in his honor would be appropriate. We even exchanged gifts. It is the middle of winter in Maine and not much happens at Well Sweep Farm this time of year so we have to be a little inventive.

When it came time to open my present, given to me by my daughter-in-law, all were thrilled to see I had been the recipient of the much sought after definitive guide THE STRAY SHOPPING CARTS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA.
My daughter-in-law knows me all too well and she rightly guessed I would want to curl up by the fire and immerse myself in this esoteric study of stray shopping carts, patiently waiting for the snow to clear so I could drag my poor wife (she’s a saint) along to scout out some of the many locations highlighted in the field guide.

The authors claim that what many people may simply see as a sign of urban blight is actually an indicator of consumer society gone too far. This seminal book contains a complete classification system with numerous photographs to aid in identification. This handsome book will rest right next to my dog-eared Field Guide to North American Birds, ready for my next outing.

One can only hope there is money in the freshly minted stimulus plan earmarked for The Niagara Gorge clean up project. You will have to buy your own copy to fully appreciate the beauty of this; it’s available on Amazon, like everything else in the world.

With all the empty houses dotting the land as a result of foreclosures it doesn’t seem as if volunteers for Habitat for Humanity would be much in demand so if I can convince my wife to accompany me we may do our part by joining in the Niagara project. Based on the reception I received from my wife when I suggested this field trip I may have to wait for a second round of financing from Congress if they consider the plight of stray plastic bags, discarded tires, and stray traffic cones. I’m a little disappointed as I always wanted to see Niagara Falls.

GOD LIKE

A friend of mine, a highly accomplished and widely collected artist, offered me the opportunity to work as his understudy. It didn’t last long, I shook too much. One day I joined him in his studio as he was finishing a 50” X 50” painting, destined to be sent to his New York City gallery, when he turned to me and said, “Take the controls”. It reminded me of my brief stint at flying lessons. I was fine with the pilot safely ensconced beside me with a hand on the tiller but when it came time to solo I looked for the parachute.

The artist, who shall remain nameless for fear of alienating his collectors, asked me to paint the last remaining, and brightest star in the nearly finished work of art. I screwed up my courage, and with the aid of a painting stick to steady my hand, (which did absolutely no good by the way) proceeded to stare at the appointed spot where the star was to appear. After what seemed like an eternity (I was creating the firmament after all) my hand steadied enough to give it a go.

False start. My arm, supported by the painting stick, didn’t move. I couldn’t quite reach the canvas. An invisible string attached to my elbow kept my brush, awash with starlight, a safe distance from the canvas. One more deep breath and I let it rip. A splash of color, just where God intended that star to shine, appeared on the canvas. To be honest, I think I had closed my eyes for fear of painting a comet where none should be visible.

Job well done, the painting was shipped off to the gallery and now hangs in a home I will never visit but a part of me resides there, lighting up the evening sky, and shining its grace on that lucky individual. It has been said you never know what it is like to be someone until you walk in their shoes. Now I know how God must have felt as he dabbed the sky with the points of light that guide us through life.

Happy birthday Galileo.