forever young, for Greg (and thanks, Bob Dylan)

I just learned that a friend of mine died. I will miss his brightness–he was electric! Greg was a man of witty conversation, warm bear hugs, and passionately-held beliefs that fueled–along with many excellent wines and wonderful food–heated debates over dinner tables in Michigan, Indiana, and in France. Because Greg was not only a voracious reader and bon vivant, he was also a traveler, fluent in French like his wife Catherine, my friend and colleague of many years at Notre Dame. I remember when they met, how in love they were, how beautiful it was to witness and to enjoy being with them. Greg even came to our monthly Café français with students, on occasion! What a guy.

So this morning I’ve been moving around with a heavy heart. Luckily I had the good sense to turn on the radio to KEXP, and wouldn’t you know it, DJ John Richards just played the perfect song for Greg (for us, really): “Forever Young,” by Bob Dylan. Listen to the music here (with heart-breaking photos of Dylan over the years), and here, for a purer version of the music.

So rest now, friend Greg and go where you are, assured you will live on in our sad hearts, and we’ll think of you over dinner tonight, and pause to give thanks for knowing you. And may Catherine come visit us soon. And we’ll drink toasts to Greg, and tell stories, and laugh through our tears, and we too will stay forever young…

Forever Young

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the light surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

1973, Ram’s Horn Music.

Lyrics from: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/forever-young/

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If you read only one book this year,

let it be this one: When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi.

It received all the accolades our society can give a book.*

As for me, I listened to the book while working on “Respect” quilt no. 4. I’m doing the tie-quilting now, a slow laborious task conducive to peaceful reflection. In listening to the words of When Breath Becomes Air, I felt like I was sitting next to a dear wise friend who, just like me, was searching in literature–ancient and less so–for guidance on living a good life. A life that means something in the big scheme of things, at least such as a human can do. Paul Kalanithi loved English literature deeply and studied Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and cites their beautiful words throughout this book. He also cites authors I’ve never heard anyone cite, but who are dear to me, like Osler, a famed doctor whose book (pub. 1919) I discovered during 2016-18, while mentally preparing myself to depart from the university, the only identity I’d ever known.

If you seek wisdom about how to live life with integrity, in poetic and philosophical prose, if you wonder how to face death, and don’t mind receiving technical knowledge about how lung cancer makes its way through the human body (useful, but not really a genre I’d seek out), read Paul Kalanithi’s book, When Breath Becomes Air.

Or listen to it, as I did. I think I’ll do so again some day. I bought the book too; it will likely arrive in a couple weeks. I look forward to the book arriving here in my home. When I see it, I will feel reassured, knowing he is there and I can visit his mind again, for times when I feel sad or alone or meaningless. He died at age 37, and I’m still here in my sixth decade. Pretty lucky.

In the meantime, I went back to Osler this morning and found this quote, my farewell for now to you, dear reader. Remember Osler was writing in 1919:

“Let us not be discouraged. … If survived, a terrible infection, such as confluent small-pox, seems to benefit the general health. Perhaps such an attack through which we have passed may benefit the body cosmic. … Plato concludes that ‘States are as the men are, they grow out of human characters’ (Rep. VIII), and then, as the dream-republic approached completion, he realized that after all the true State is within, of which each one of us is the founder, and patterned on an ideal the existence of which matters not a whit. Is not the need of this individual reconstruction the Greek message to modern democracy? and with it is blended the note of individual service to the community.”**

P.S. Thank you Seattle Public Library for the audiobooks service!

* It was a New York Times bestseller, spending 68 weeks on the non-fiction bestseller list at publication in 2016. Matt McCarthy of USA Today gave it 4 out of 4 stars and said, “It’s a story so remarkable, so stunning, and so affecting that I had to take dozens of breaks just to compose myself enough to get through it.” Nick Romeo of The Boston Globe wrote that it, “possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy.” Melissa Maerz of Entertainment Weekly stated that the book was “so original—and so devastating. . . . Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Breath_Becomes_Air

** Sir William Osler, “Old Humanities and New Science,” pp. 96-97. see “Favorite Books” on this blog.

the death squares… but don’t be scared!

Update on the “Respect Quilts”: No quilt in honor of the Black experience in America would be complete without a representation of death. So I made these death squares today and think they are rather cute. Why be morbid? Death happens. It hurts, it sucks, we all hate it. There will be place on this quilt for political statements; I have four patches to sew on the back which make the #BLM issues clear. But death is all of ours and the way we handle it can be light-hearted. We can make it dance too, while we’re living.

These squares use bright yellow cotton to evoke the energy unleashed when we shake off our mortal coils, and they depict grinning skeletons doing all kinds of silly things: kicking their heels, brandishing swords, or tipping their top hat at you, as if they stepped right out of a classical Hollywood musical. The black velours makes these squares irresistible to the touch, just as the detailed piecing intrigues the eye with tiny bits of beautiful fabrics and satiny textures, thrown together in an off-kilter way.

strange smoky weather brings back childhood memories

 

 

We rejoiced over our arrival here in Seattle in early July, when we discovered our amazing view of downtown across Elliott Bay. But look at it now.

The weather report is weird:  “77 degrees, Smoke.”

Honey Girl and I went for our walk as usual this evening and my eyes have been burning ever since. It is a very strange sensation to live in smoke. The neighbors I talked to on my walk all seemed kind of rattled by this too. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” we think anxiously, but it does not make any sense. We’re surrounded by water on three sides!

(map of West Seattle)

One of my favorite children’s books has a harrowing forest fire scene that I’ve never forgotten. It’s not Bambi, it’s Smokey the Bear. 

I so love this book. As you see, when the fire engulfs the little bear cub, separating him from his mother, Smokey follows his mom’s advice: “When danger threatens, climb a tree.”

But still, it is a traumatic experience!  The text reads: “So up a pine tree Bear Cub went. Around him the forest fire roared and crackled. Flames licked at Bear Cub’s shaggy fur and singed his tender paws. But he closed his eyes and just hung on. When he opened his eyes again after a while, he could scarcely believe what he saw. Instead of the cool, green, shady woods, all around him stood hundreds of ugly blackened sticks with trails of smoke still curling from them.”

The scene where the forest ranger’s daughter gets to play with Smokey was always my favorite. What a dream come true to play with a living Teddy bear!

However, the shrewd critic might point out a few flaws in this tragi-comedy. Where is Smokey’s mother, for example? And what about Bambi and Dumbo? Why do writers of children’s literature dispense with mothers so often?

Maybe because the kids secretly wish for that…

Then there’s the little problem of watching Smokey grow into a grown-up man-cub. Like the female creature dreamed up, then destroyed, in Shelley’s Frankenstein, the grown-up Smokey of reality might not be quite so nice…

Wish it would rain.

 

ten days left: a Zen rebuff of Bachelard?

Today’s thought from Path to Peace seems at first glance to present a sound rebuff of the sentimentalism of Gaston Bachelard that I quoted yesterday. In her reflections, Venerable Wuling stresses facts we must admit, such as: to be alive is already to be dying a little every day, every action is ephemeral, and all love will end.

Grim realities.

Or are they really that grim? And do they truly rebuff Bachelard’s perspective? I think rather that they are complementary. They describe human realities at different levels of magnification–from the laser-like focus on the subtle perceptions of individual thinkers living with the material world in Bachelard to the Olympian scope of a Zen sage, who from a distant and dispassionate perspective looks over eons of growth, blossoming, and death in endless cycles. Both may be right, depending on how you look at things.

Although the Zen writings seem depressing, perhaps they are rather to be read as incitements to resist the inevitable! to enjoy every minute or at least accept it, out of mischief if for no other reason. Just to spite the fates, like a trickster in your own life.

June 17

four things are constant:

no world lasts forever

but will be swept away;

it is no shelter

and protects not;

one will leave everything behind

in passing to the next life;

life is incomplete

and unsatisfying.

– Shuling Wu, Path to Peace, “June 17.”

I prefer the entry for June 16 instead:

one who is free

from desire and sorrow

leaves all fetters behind

to pass beyond birth and death.

like a swan rising from a lake,

he moves on in peace

never looking back.

 

Letting go: on moving, death and the untidy garden

One of the poignant things about moving is letting go of things we once held dear. I’ve been abandoning books right and left (to the bins managed by Better World Books, but still…). Rich has abandoned his garden, once a crowning achievement which fed our family for weeks in the summer. Gazing out on the garden this morning while meditating, I savored its lovely untidiness, which brought up the connection to one of my favorite quotes of all time, by the French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne.

Thought of the day: Letting go is healthy and delightful (even if it feels wrenching at times).

***

“I want death to find me in the garden planting cabbages, but not afraid of her, and even less of my imperfect garden.”

“Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait.”

Michel de Montaigne, Essais, 1580

***

Imperfection and letting go are key concepts in Zen philosophy as they are in T’ai chi. As Bob Klein writes, “Many people are drawn to T’ai-chi-Ch’uan because it enables them to let go of their tensions permanently. Without tension, anxiety and worry, life is a lot more enjoyable. … to release this tension, you must go through the nervous system, for it is a nerve, constantly sending its signal to a muscle, which causes that muscle to tense. You are making yourself tense. Tension, therefore, is not released by doing something extra, but by letting go of something you are already doing.”  (Movements of Magic, 16)

***

Did Montaigne know of Zen philosophy?! Or perhaps the Stoics before him? sure seems like there is a connection between East and West deep down …

At any rate, Bon dimanche!