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How to Age Exhuberantly

January 27, 2012

OK kids, you’ve got to check out this book: 30 Lessons for Living - Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans. It is the distillation of 300 interviews undertaken by a professor at Cornell University with elderly Americans deemed by outside consensus to have lived a good life.

The lessons are spread over several different areas of concern, but “there was no issue about which the experts were more adamant and forceful” than work. The title of that chapter is “Glad to get up in the morning – Lessons for a successful and fulfilling career”. And it ain’t about the money, bub.

“You know those nightmares where you are shouting a warning but no sound comes out? Well, that’s the intensity with which the experts wanted to tell younger people that spending years in a job you dislike is a recipe for regret and a tragic mistake”. Big money may not accompany one’s bliss, but following it is the only way a happy denouement might.

And there’s a related lesson in this week’s Economist: “Exercise and Longevity – Worth all the sweat”. Doctors (including Dr Brother) have long known that regular vigorous exercise helps thwart all kinds of ailments, from headbone to footbone to decrepitude.

Research is beginning to suggest that exercise helps by enhancing ‘autophagy’ which is the body’s own process of scrapping and recycling surplus, worn-out, or malformed proteins. It thus slows down the biological clock.

Combine a fulfilling career and vigor and you just might get, well, somebody like Lucien Freud, pictured above in his eighty-third year. He died last summer at 89, but for the nearly sixty years leading up to two weeks before passing he worked with a subject for several hours in the morning, a different one in the afternoon, seven days a week, standing up.

“And the moment he lifted his hands, most of his ailments seemed to melt away.” Big money did follow his bliss, but to him it mattered not. The only manner in which wealth changed him was that it diminished his love of gambling: “It’s not fun when you have the money…”

*30 Lessons for Living, Pillemer,Hudson StPress, 2011

The Lessons are for: Happy Marriage, Fulfilling Career, Parenting, Ageing Fearlessly and Well, Living Life w/o Regrets, and Happiness (Time spent worrying is time wasted – Your choice).

*Economist Jan 21 – 27, 2012

***Psychoanalyzing Lucian Freud, Vanity Fair, Feb 2012

****CF Blogpost October 12, 2010

*****And, uh, Freud didn’t read the part of the book about marriage and parenting. He fathered at least sixteen children with six different women. And though he clearly enjoyed himself, I guess I do not commend to you his particular brand of exuberance…

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Samurai Had Knee Problems Too – As Well As Physical Therapists

January 20, 2012

Katsumoto: “Do you believe that a man can change his destiny?”

Algren: “I believe that a man does what he can until his destiny is revealed.”

What I’ve been doing while waiting has been to run and work out and after nearly sixty fairly intense years my knees sort of blew. Should have noticed the symptoms earlier, but at the time it seemed like all of a sudden I was unable to run another step. They burned while lying in bed.

Tried to wait them out for like a month, but just got more morose and lame by the day. Went to an orthopedic surgeon who x-rayed, said that there was nothing heinously out of order, gave me a few hits of Celebrex, and offered that “God gives us pain for a reason.” Uh, thanks for that.

Pills didn’t help much. Kids suggested I go to a physical therapist which seemed to make sense and doc’s nurse gave me a referral. I showed up at the appointed hour expecting some sort of Teutonic weight-lifter type. “Ve vant to pump you up” and all that.

Well, no. A feminine voice calling my name drew attention away from The Economist and I looked up. “I’m just back from maternity leave and you’re my first patient” she said as she turned and arched her back like a cat getting ready to prowl. A cat in a snug yellow lycra top. “Come this way”.

“Knees, huh?” She took me to a small consulting room and gave me a pair of flimsy disposable shorts and told me to put them on and “I’ll be right back”. It definitely felt weird waiting in a dark room, nearly naked, for an attractive woman younger than either of my daughters. What the world would I tell wife?

She returned. “Let me watch you walk back and forth a few times. Hmm. Now lie face down on the table.” I did and she grabbed my rear with a firm grip and said that she was “going to give [me] buns of steel”. I arched my back, my eyes opened wide, and I worried more than usual about the next bit of my destiny to be revealed.

She massaged and probed around a bit while explaining that after doing the same sorts of exercises for six decades some sinews had stretched while others had drawn more taught putting my joints out of alignment. Finding myself composed, I asked about a few other aches and pains that somehow came to mind.

She felt around a bit more, gave me a new ameliorative exercise routine, told me to get dressed, and left. In the parking lot I called my brother to see if his knees were bothering him. At home that night, well, I described a Teuton. Now some months later, with mixed feelings, I can report that I’m again ready for battle.

Posted in Family, Physical Therapy | 2 Comments »

How To Never Have A Sick Day

December 16, 2011

I obviously like words. I have the OED on my hard drive and enjoy just cruising through it from time to time. My son used to call me Mr. Big Words, but truth be told I am almost always dead last in a Scrabble challenge. Guess I’m just good at looking stuff up.

I should probably come clean though and fess that my favorite words are monosyllabic, terse, and widely understood. Even among non English speakers. I remember a drunken Swedish stevedore reeling them off on a North Sea wharf long ago even before I heard George Carlin do so.

They come in handy. Our first dog would hide when she heard me strapping on my tool belt because she knew what to expect. Our recently passed pal Sauger wouldn’t though, but he was a guy and must have understood.

I’m sure I’m responsible for the, uh, clever part of our three kids’ vocabulary. Isn’t it an event of which to be proud when your child is first heard to say “oh crap” when the family gets caught outside in the rain? Or drops the f-bomb at Thanksgiving dinner while sporting a cherubic first step grin?

Furthermore, I’m happy to relate that there is no longer any reason to feel even a twinge of guilt for having set such an example. Exemplar is more like it. Salty language has been proven to be an avenue to salubrity. “I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear” said psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in England in his study “Swearing as a response to pain”.

He and his colleague Claudia Umland undertook a project in which subjects held their hands in freezing water for as long as they could. Some were told to spew epithet(s) of choice without relent and others to keep mum. The former withdrew their hands long after the latter group gave up.

Scientists theorize that cursing emanates from a different part of the brain than does pitter patter. A part (the amygdala) more closely associated with emotion and the fight or flight response. It has been an evolutionary advantage to feel one’s self gird quickly up at the first note of pain through whatever sensory system the message might have arrived.

Hmm. I read somewhere that Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney said that trolling his mind for just the right word was indeed like throwing a line in a pond to catch a fish. What could be the metaphor or simile for my more base proclivity? Like plunging a stool?

Oh well, could though be why I haven’t had a sick day in thirty-five years. I’ll have to ask Dr. Brother. And hope he doesn’t say anything to Mom.

*Study was published in the journal NeuroReport in July 2009. I read about it in Scientific American.

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I Need The Eggs

December 9, 2011

Interestingly, in his new book Who’s In Charge* cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga wrote: “…we are people, not brains” by which he means that, uh, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. That though an emergent property of the bit of grey matter up top, a meeting of minds can not be understood as can, say, theIndianapolis 500 by the mechanics of an internal combustion engine.

He holds that: “analyzing single brains in isolation cannot illuminate the capacity of responsibility”. Rather, it is “an interaction between people – a social contract”. One, crucially, able to be honored or broken. And it’s irreducible. A solitary test lap would be meaningless.

Makes me think of the Buddhist imperative to “forget the self”, because there’s not one really there to begin with. It’s (they say) a construct assembled by the brain from inputs internal and external to aid us in navigation through a daily routine. If some combination of influences doesn’t make you feel trustworthy or un-, you will have no ability to feel either.

Perhaps the example of feral children can provide a useful, if horrific, example. Romulusand Remus aside, there have indeed been cases of infants and children who survived early extreme neglect, sometimes actually with the nurturance of wild animals. If protracted, a child’s mental and psychological development ends at a prehensile stage.

Beyond hope and possibility of resurrection. Should a one not be exposed to language – in any form – by puberty, the potential for later acquisition would have thus been rendered forever lost. But, with luck and the agency of a “Good Enough Parent”**, a child grows to become part of a rich network with myriad relationships – some inchoate and fleeting some deep and long.

Of the latter sort, I like the way Woody Allen put it in his film Annie Hall. “I-I thought of that old joke, you know, this, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And uh, the doctor says ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says ‘I would but I need the eggs’. Well, I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd and…but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

I do.

*I read about this book in a review by Raymond Tallis in the 11/12-13 WSJ. Gazzaninga first gained prominence in the 50’s when he pioneered split brain research. That is, brains in which the tissue connecting the halves – the corpus callosum – had been severed. This lead to the knowledge of hemispherical specialization. Interesting to note that the corpus callosum is more substantial in females. I wonder what the ramifications of that are…

**I’ve heard this phrase a lot, but it’s capitalized in reference to the eponymous great book by Bruno Bettleheim.

***Perhaps the eggs come frequently to mind because Annie Hall came out – and won the Oscar – in 1977. The year I got my roommate.

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Best Doggone Dog In The West*

December 2, 2011

That’s Sauger looking over Great Sand Dune National Park during a road trip with his soul mate a few summers ago. He’d already turned twelve by then which is old for a big dog – just check out his grey muzzle. He loved his home, but wouldn’t be separated from her if it was within his power not to be and he thus enthusiastically accompanied her on this artist-in-residency.

Although we have many photos of him with friends and all family members, I am quite drawn to the one above. It makes me think hard about what the world must have looked like through his eyes. It makes me remember the subtle new verve in his demeanor I noticed when the two of them picked me up at the dusty windblown airport about an hour from that remote park.

He’d seen things. Smelled them first probably. Ya, imagine the rich sensual experience it was for him, an Iowa boy, to take it all in from high up the side of a mountain. Then near the end of their stay, it must have been an immensely satisfying, if uncomplicated, recapitulation of an incredible existential adventure.

He’d had to worry about blowing sand, coyotes at night, weird birds and bugs, a thundering herd of elk, steep mountain trails, and the cold snow rimmed (in summer!) mountain lake far above tree line – all the while keeping close tabs on his companion. He and she had survived it all – together – and their bond deepened to unplumbed depths by the end of the experience.

In his book Dogs Never Lie About Love, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson goes to a very great length to describe canine capacity for emotion and our capacity to be drawn into it. “Perhaps it harks back to a time when humans were more like dogs, more spontaneous, more capable of expressing joy, able to experience intense emotions and enjoy the world outside our skins more immediately, in the same way we see our dogs doing.”

“If any species on earth shares this miraculous ability with us [to love intensely and completely] it is the dog, for the dog truly loves us, sometimes beyond expectation, beyond measure, beyond what we deserve, more, indeed, than we love ourselves.”

Holy Dogs. Our friend Sauger moved on earlier this week just a few months shy of his fifteenth birthday. He was strong and vigorous till nearly the very end and the marvel of vet, friend, and foe.

Here’s how it is for his favorite artist: “It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog and I will become as generous and loving as they are.”

Jeesh. Best doggone dog in the west.

*From the lyrics to the song you just heard. See the movie if you haven’t.

**cf post of 6/9/10 for Sauger’s near drowning

***cf post of 10/17/09 for more about the Sand Dunes

****cf post of 5/8/09 for a photo and emotional prelude

*****cf post of 11/21/08 for a photo and a brief look into his mind

Posted in Family | 2 Comments »

Wonder If He Still Had An Accent

November 18, 2011

OK. See that guy? That’s William Godfrey. He was born in Kent England late eighteen-forties and began life in an orphanage. Somehow left/escaped and in 1855 made his way to the states as a stowaway. Found work as a butcher’s apprentice. Few years later mustered into the Union Army.

Was captured and taken to the infamous “Can this be hell?” Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp shortly after its opening in February 1864. Roughly one in three fell to its deadly mix of beatings, squalor, and disease. Before succumbing, one, hometown Geneseo Illinois, showed a tintype of fiancé. Her name, Myra, was the last word to leave friend’s lips.

Emaciated and dehydrated, Godfrey said that he survived interment by making his way, under the dark of each night, over and around the dead and dying to a fetid creek. Months felt like eternity, but miraculously, come summer, he became part of a prisoner exchange and led a group of forty men driving 200 cattle 300 miles to meet Sherman in Atlanta.

Fourteen survived to join the General’s conflagratory march to the sea. There, he boarded a ship which caught fire and foundered off Cape Hatteras. Didn’t know how to swim and went down three times that he remembered – the last of which fondly… Came to on deck of another ship making north.

Marched in a parade in Washington, DC. Eastern army was done up in crisp uniforms and white gloves. Passing before President Lincoln’s box, Godfrey and the rest of the Western army were bedraggled, barefoot, barehanded, and bareheaded. They felt disgraced, but were fed and regained energy and horizon.

War ended soon thereafter and he mustered out to homelessness. Thought of that tintype which he’d somehow kept, made his way to Geneseo, and even though the scrap was by then but a vestigial facsimile found where lived she of whom it had been taken. Found her in a garden. Found her beautiful beyond any dream.

She’s the one in the photo below, at lower right. Great-Great-Grandma Godfrey. Babe in starched linen is my mom. Grandma Gretchen is holding her with Great-Grandma Lu standing behind. Grandpa Godfrey was gone by then, but had apparently led every town and county parade – fully festooned – till he was no longer able. Wonder if he still had an accent.

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Nice Shorts

September 16, 2011

Just after the first of the year a twentysomething, uh, friend noticed a problem. Performing a Lance Armstrong inspired inspection while showering he noticed a bit of topography that had not previously been there. Uh, oh. Oh well, probably nothing.

Was something and it got bigger over the course of the following few months. “Jeesh, better look into this” he thought. “But how?” he wondered being a long way from last doctor visit and starting to get a bit nervous.

Tough not to think of stuff like that once your mind wraps around it. “I don’t give a shit if I never win the Tour de France” he thought. “But I know I don’t want my olive skewered or whatever else treatment might involve.” Thoughts of excision came soon to his mind. Dirt nap next.

After calling a few friends he found himself at a clinic about which he’d been told by one who’d used it to procure allergy medicine. “I got a lump on my leg” was all that he’d given when making the appointment. “Right or left?” “right”.

Nurse guided him back to a room where he sat in wait upon one of those weird uncomfortable tables. Door opened after a few minutes and in walked an attractive woman approximately five years his senior. “Hi, I’m Dr. Anniston, what seems to be the problem?”

Friend isn’t shy, but for a moment lost track of his thoughts. “Problem with your left leg?” Doc asked. “Not exactly.” “Not exactly?” Sigh. “I noticed something in the shower a few months ago and it’s only gotten bigger”.

“Oh I see. Right one I take it then?” “Ya.” “OK, stand up, drop your pants, and we’ll have a look.” His attention lapsed again for a split second as he recalled the old bit regarding the wisdom of leaving home in less than perfect underwear.

She pulled up a stool sat down and waited for clothes to hit the floor. “Nice shorts”. Palpated left then right then each again. After a few moments of this she said “you’re probably ok, but we had better have an ultrasound. Nice to meet you and we’ll be in touch with the results.”

The procedure was done a few days later. Was much less embarrassing. Pants only part way down, towel covering all but the one orb. Nonchalant technician rubbed the thing with warm gel and then gently passed a wand all around it while peering into a screen. Didn’t say much except at the end to proffer tissue and to expect a call.

Later that afternoon, it came: “Hi, this is Dr. Anniston. Would you like to meet me later today? I’m working late.” “Uh sure, at the clinic?” “No, 1323 Montana Santa Monica, R and D. 8:00 PM, ok?” “Uhm OK”. That had all transpired so quickly and he’d been taken so aback that he didn’t ask any questions. He was terrified. “R and D, that can’t be good” he thought. On the drive over he debated whether or not to call friends or folks. Decided against it.

Everything was ablur and it was too dark to read addresses anyway. He parked the car in a spot he knew had to be close and made his way. Heart racing three times his resting pulse, he almost got hit in a cross walk.

Found the place and went in. There were lots of people. It was a bar*. Doc walks up, big smile, hot pink low cut wrap around dress. “Call me Andrea and let’s have some drinks. “You’re fine and I thought it’d be fun to celebrate!”

*http://www.hillstone.com/#/restaurants/cafeRandD/

**coincidentally, “friend” did some design work for men’s grooming products company Axe some of which are depicted in advertisement below.

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Pas Timide

June 17, 2011

Can you believe the news of men of late? Deeds done that you’d call inane if not for collateral damage, ramifications, and victims? A presidential candidate with a love child. A governor with one too. A congressman broadcasting his ‘package’. The French president of the International Monetary Fund accused of violent sexual abuse. Jeesh. Brings to mind the first line of a Neruda poem: “It so happens I am sick of being a man”.

Well, I don’t wish I played for another team and understand those actions to be, like, mutations in the drive without which none of us would be here. Still, what’s up? Take the last incident cited above. How could one of the most prominent men on the planet undertake such horror? From whence could he have come?

First reports from France conveyed a sense of outrage for the fact that a front runner for their next presidential campaign was seen across all media doing a perp walk. Soon though came reports of other unwanted encounters with DSK and then, amazingly, of a broader related permeation of French society.

It was incredible to listen to a female editor of the prominent French newspaper, Le Monde, describe conditions for women, though not perfect, as much better here in the USA than en France. This from a culture in which the employment of idiomatic Americanisms can be illegal and American taste and popular culture vilified.

Made me break out de Tocqueville. “In France… women commonly receive a reserved, retired, and almost conventual education… then they are suddenly abandoned, without a guide and without assistance, in the midst of all the irregularities inseparable from democratic society.”

Yikes!

“Long before an American girl arrives at the marriageable age, her emancipation from maternal control begins: she has scarcely ceased to be a child, when she already thinks for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse. It is rare that an American woman, at any age, displays childish timidity or ignorance.”

Democracy in America was first published in France en Francais in 1835. Perhaps “plus ca change plus ca meme chose” – More things change the more they remain the same. The American women with whom I’m most familiar would most definitely not be taken for ignorant or timid. Toward one should an uninvited paw be extended, a bloody stump would be what was pulled back.

*Walking Around

**cf post of 10/9/09 for more examples of neat stuff us guys think up

Posted in consciousness/psychology, Family, Literature | Leave a Comment »

I (Sorta) Wonder What It’d Be Like…

May 20, 2011

Brother was riding his bike recently, came upon an unexpected obstruction, went over the handlebars, and fractured his wrist. His recollection of the event was interesting. “It was all in slow motion. I remember the sound pattern made by my helmet on the sidewalk.”

Perfect timing. Maybe not for him, but for us. In the April 25 edition of the New Yorker, there’s an article about scientist David Eaglemen whose research seeks to understand our perception of time. He was drawn to that study by the experience of falling off a roof as a child. “In life threatening situations, time seems to slow down. It’s a moment of absolute calm and eerie mental acuity.”

Why? Well, it seems that it’s a matter of how much information is on the way to the brain and how it coordinates. By way of example, light travels faster than sound, but they use a starting pistol in the Olympics instead of a light flash because the brain reacts more quickly to sound. Cavemen would have been well advised to flee a rustling of the brush long before a predator presented itself visually.

The more stimulating and/or serious a situation, the more input sent to our accreted cerebral “hodgepodge of systems”. One component, the amygdala, is sort of an emotional node and seems to become hyperactive when scared and records far more detail than when bored.

As a result, one’s experience of the passage of time is vivid and slows significantly. During an experiment, subjects terrified by a uniquely “plausibly deadly” amusement park ride overestimated the passage of time by thirty-six percent.

Ok. What event would put one most in extremis… would push the phenomena the furthest? Having your head cut off comes most immediately to my mind, but to be honest I have to admit that not an original thought.

From the perspective first of a caveman finding his neck in the jaws of a saber toothed tiger, through the likes of John the Baptist, Anne Boleyn, and Marie Antoinette, writer Robert Olin Butler wrote a book entitled Severance in which he presents sixty-two different takes of what the experience of decapitation might be like.

He begins with these two epigrams to set tone and style: “After careful study and due deliberation it is my opinion the head remains conscious for one minute and a half after decapitation.” (Attributed to a Dr. Dassy D’Estaing 1883) And: “In heightened state of emotion people speak at the rate of 160 words a minute.” The math works out to about 240 words for that ninety seconds and is thus the length of each of the stories.

Sweet précis, eh? Mull that around a bit. Would you be dizzy if your head rolled? Would it feel claustrophobic if your noggin fell into a basket? Would you be able to close your eyelids? Would you if you could?

Courtesy of Mr. Butler, here’re the last 240 words that came to the mind of Ta Chin, a Chinese wife beheaded by her husband in 1838:

“straight and whole are my feet I would rise and run as I have loved for many winkings of the moon to run with my brothers but I press my feet side by side and wiggle my toes this last time and whisper to them goodbye I know what is before me my mother in the courtyard singing prayers to Kuan Yin the goddess of mercy, not to spare me a life of pain but to wither my feet to perfection, the mercy of the golden lotus, the mercy of a wealthy man to keep me, I tremble I am ready to weep but for these tiny stones of anger Kuan Yin has placed in the corners of my eyes even as the footbinder puts the soaking tub before me that first night even as my husband trembles before me in the torch light trembling always from the opium but this night he trembles from what he believes about the brushing of my sleeve by a man he himself brought to our house and my mother sings and my toes are seized and folded hard under and the wrappings wind and wind and squeeze and my arch cracks and I see Buddha in heaven sitting on his lotus but it is my naked foot the golden lotus he sits upon and hands push me down my neck made bare and I cry please, before my head cut off my feet”

Think I’d try to think of the Marx Brothers. Or maybe Mel Brooks. Ya, that’s it – Young Frankenstein.

*New Yorker, April 25, 2011, “The Possibilian” by Burkhard Bilger

**Sculpture above? It’s Woman With Her Throat Cut by Alberto Giacometti.

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Tornado in a Lumberyard

April 29, 2011

The 1913 Armory Show was arguably the most important exhibition of art ever organized on this continent. It introduced cubism, futurism, Cezanne, Duchamp, Picasso, and much more to audiences on this side of the pond and inflected the NA zeitgeist like nothing else before or since.

It was up in NYC from February 17 to March 15 of that year and then traveled to Chicago where it hung in the Art Institute March 24 to April 16. From there it went back east to Boston.

The postcard image above is, of course, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. My great-grandfather sent it to my great-grandmother from the Chicago venue. His handwriting encircling the picture reads:

“This is a photo of one of the cubist pictures. It is said to be a picture of a nude woman walking down stairs. I don’t think any of the postal authorities will object to it as improper as it goes through the mails. I have one more I will bring home with me.”

“There is no news. I went to see this exhibit and must say it is a fright. Yet I heard one or two fools raving over the beauty of these daubs. It was worth going to see however just to see what some will praise. Lorado Taft* says it reminds him of nothing so much as a lumber yard after a tornado. Home as usual tomorrow at 6. Yours, EC”

My great-grandfather was a judge who frequently traveled between Geneseo, Illinois and Chicago. He died young and left my grandmother, one of five offspring to survive, and great grandmother to fend for themselves. Grandma adored her father and held dear precious memories and memorabilia through to the end. Interesting now to allow them to take one back…

Compare the image on top with the one just above and you will get an idea of an experience none of us will ever again have. An in-person audience with a work of art will always be different than one with a reproduction**, but any potential for shock and awe has been removed by the quality and ubiquity of virtual experience.

On second thought, I retract that observation. Or qualify it I guess with the addition of the following phrase: given current knowledge of our universe…

*Lorado Taft (1860-1936) was a prominent American sculptor and teacher. His studio was in Chicago and he taught at the Art Institute.

**I’m pretty sure I’ve used this in a previous post, but in case you’ve forgotten, New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldal wrote: “Reproductions are like pandering ghosts, they show us what we want to see”.