Last posts on death

music friday

2009-11-20T17:32:00+01:00

The Vein

2009-11-17T19:30:16+01:00

They couldn't find the vein, so they tried again. I hoped he would survive them. He was a fighter. I kissed him goodbye.

September 18, 1985

2009-09-17T22:43:12+02:00

Tomorrow, September 18th, is the 24th anniversary of my father’s death in San Francisco. He died at around 3 A.M. My brother Alex woke me up and told me: Dad loved you very much. I jumped out of bed and went to my father’s room. After making the sign of the cross, I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

The Last Leaf Of Autumn

2009-08-30T19:11:00+02:00

Long ago when I was still a child

you lost the battle for your life

after a fierce fight

fought with all your might

And for years now I’ve wondered

what did you see

that made you cling to life’s tree

like the last leaf of autumn

Was there no light

and none to guide you

to the other side

No angels

no glimmer of eternal peace

and did you not feel relieve

With your life having become unbearable

towards the end

what fears could death have sent

And were it his demons showing you

what would be next

or were it your own that scared you away

from taking the final step

At the very end

much as that last leaf of autumn

a light breeze was enough

to take you from this world

Totally worn

you lost your grasp

and a brittle leaf was sent airborne

I hope it found peace at last

Chiquito's Death

2009-08-08T21:03:35+02:00

Saturday, August 8, 2009: Of all the unfortunate experiences I have had this time back in the U.S., the unexpected death of my dog in Argentina is the one that I regret the most. That is the one thing that makes me sadder than all the rest. Chiquito was a stray that I adopted shortly before my trip over here. I wish I had been able to bring him with me (I had his doggie passport and everything). The reception we would have received (Chiquito, Lauchita and me) would not have been good. Nevertheless, it would have been better to get him on the plane. If anybody was my soul mate, that dog was.

!5 Years

2009-07-09T18:35:00+02:00

Thursday, July 9, 2009: I lost my mother on July 10, 1994. it is incredible that almost 15 years have gone by--15 hard years. My mother was a good woman, a woman who never forgot her own mother, my grandmother Ana. She lived 54 years without her and I believe that they are together up there in Heaven. My mother is probably smiling, the way she smiled that afternoon in Burbank when we went to the ice cream parlor to have an ice cream sundae and the chocolate syrup ran down her chin. That is my favorite memory of her. She was happy that day. She was not in any kind of pain, not emotional or physical or anything. She just was herself,the self she wanted to be.

RIP M.J.

2009-06-26T07:09:00+02:00

REY!

Mongolian Death Worm

2009-06-18T06:49:00+02:00

OK, so . . . almost two months without a post. That's my bad. . . . Well now I'm back. Because I found something that I absolutely couldn't--couldn't--keep to myself. What is this mysterious secret? Is it the formula for cold fusion? The cure for cancer? The missing link?Nay!It is allghoi khorkhoy, colloquially called the Mongolian Death Worm (Mongo, for short). In addition to being the title of my debut album, this bad-mamba-jamba has the ability to spew sulfuric acid and kill at a distance(!) with electric shocks.Yes!Alas, so-called "scientists" have been unable to find any evidence of Mongo's existence. But if you just ask the Mongolian locals, you'll find out the truth.Fun Fact: Mongo's name translates to "blood filled intestine worm" because of its resemblance to the intestine of a cow!So, clearly, I have to feature Mongo in a Sci-Fi Original Movie. I mean, it would just be immoral not to. "Attack of the Mongolian Death Worm" is the working title. With a tentative sequel planned: "Mongo Takes Manhattan." I'm thinking a team of scientists (including a fat, crude, but lovable misogynist (Putnam), a young man from Iowa with a square jaw (Rex?), and a glasses-wearing, ninety-pound city-girl, who just can't get taken seriously in the science community because of her perfect figure, blonde highlights, and natural tan (maybe . . . Ellassandra)) go to the Gobi, researching a way to stop rampant desertification of the neighboring area. But while researching the desert they make a terrible discovery. Acid and electric shocks everywhere! Rex, Ellassandra, and Putnam manage to escape back to the US, but not before Putnam is bitten by one of the little Mongos. All seems well (and Putnam's eating more than ever) when all of a sudden, Putnam experiences a horrible seizure. Moments later, dozens of Mongos erupt from his quivering fat! Then it's up to only Rex and Ellassandra to stop the worms from taking over the world!C'mon!I would at least Tivo that bitch!

Luke (1995-2009)

2009-05-21T17:06:00+02:00

You went wherever I went

for more than fourteen years

the only one I ever told all

about my hopes and fears

Never judgemental

not capable of holding a grudge

and always melting my heart

with your eyes of rich chocolate fudge

I love you deeply

and you surely were my truest of friends

and so it’s doubly sad our life together

has reached its inevitable end

On your favourite spot in the garden

you laid your weary head to rest

and peacefully went to heaven

in that you were truly blessed

No pain

no suffering

your heart just stopped

ceased remembering

how to beat

Now from the empty morning

in which I miss your enthusiastic greet

to the lonely night

without you lying snoring at my feet

I miss you throughout the day

But there’s kind solace that softens your depart

the countless memories of you frolicking about

will always warm my heart

Goodbye my friend

Rest In Peace

2009-04-10T18:42:00+02:00

REST IN PEACE

13 FEBRUARY 2004 - 8 APRIL 2009

YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED. ALWAYS!

And yeah, made me cry.. finally.. after a long time.

REY!

Understanding Death and Birth

2009-02-24T16:06:56+01:00

Beyond death there are but three possibilities: either there is nothingness, or there is infinity, or there is something between the two as there is now. The first would mean to become undone; the second would mean to become one with all of existence; the third would mean to be reborn.In the latter case, whether we are reborn in heaven or in hell or in earth, we would remain much like we are now, that is, limited. Thus we would be reborn over and over again forever, since nothing that is finite can remain the same as it is. If this cycle of reincarnations would last for an infinitely long time, it would also randomly involve an infinite amount of situations and eventually repeat them infinitely many times; if not, then it must end either in nothingness or in infinity, as it could not remain stable otherwise.This is actually quite a horrifying possibility, since it would mean that we would end up in every possible situation we could imagine, from the most blissful to the most painful, be it in reality or in imagination. Be it through our environment or hallucinations, either how, we would go through every possible experience that could be conceived of. More frightening still, because of this we would also end up being every possible person, from the most honorable to the most cruel. In some future life we might be a murderer, or a rapist or a tyrant. Worst of all, we could do nothing about the fact that everything that would ever happen would happen again, and we could never do anything to avoid it.As to what came before birth, likewise, there are again the same three possibilities. But here the possibility of infinity and of nothingness become harder to defend; after all, both nothingness and infinity are stable. There is nothing that defines them, and therefore no state into which they could evolve; after all, why should it evolve into one state and not another, if the starting points are identical? If we came from nothing, or came from infinity, then we would have remained either nothing or infinite.Nothing can simply pass from nonexistence into existence; for nonexistence has no configuration whatsoever, and so cannot change into another specific configuration such as that of a human body. This would be a complete paradox: if we came from nothing at all, then there would be nothing that would determine what we would become. There would be no reason why we should be ourselves rather than someone else, and therefore who we are would be acausal. There cannot have been a beginning, neither of the universe nor of our lives within them, because something would have caused that beginning, as well; otherwise, it would just be without any reason at all.Seen purely from our own viewpoints, how could our own consciousness one moment have not existed and then suddenly have been bound to a specified body? Since my consciousness was bound to a particular body means that it must have been defined in a particular way, but how is this possible if it had not existed before?If we suppose that everything has a cause, then this is completely impossible; thus, our own consciousness must always have existed. This may or may not mean that if this is so, it will also always exist; after all, if our consciousness had existed for an infinitely long time, then from a purely statistical viewpoint it would appear impossible to stop existing. This is not something I say because I want to believe this, for I believe the possibility of eternal repetition is far more terrifying than that of eternal nothingness. The possibility of infinity is the only that offers some comfort, as infinity could only remain stable through infinite love.That our consciousness never had a sudden beginning is not as far-fetched as it seems: after all, how can we place a line between consciousness and unconsciousness? Are not some of our own perceptions even now only partly conscious, that is, subconscious, and some to so little extent that we never realize they are there at all?At what point does a fetus become conscious in the womb? Or did we already have some more fundamental consciousness still before that? Can we pinpoint an exact moment at which it becomes conscious, before which there was no consciousness at all and after which all of a sudden there was consciousness? And if so, where did the consciousness suddenly come from? Out of the blue, from nowhere at all? Or does consciousness arise gradually?Perhaps the only solution to this question is that our consciousness has always existed; in that case, there are but two possibilities: the first is that what we are now is just another of an infinite series of reincarnations, which over time will go through every possible situation and eventually repeat themselves.The second possibility is that our consciousness has grown for an infinitely long time. Before we were born, before our consciousness was bound to the complex system of our brain, perhaps our consciousness was bound to simpler systems. Perhaps if one would go back in time and if somehow one could observe what one's consciousness had once been, one would find that it would always halve, and halve again and over and over forever as one would go further in time; perhaps once, before we were conscious of our own bodies, we were conscious on lower levels. However, since every level of consciousness could be halved, our consciousness would have been lower and lower in the past but never have reached zero; however, it would have approached zero as a limit. That is, it would have been infinitesimal in the past; as every level of consciousness would further be halved without quite reaching zero, it could have existed for an infinitely long time. If this is true, we don't need to deal with the inexplicability of consciousness that arose from nothing to become something. Perhaps consciousness is something that grows from an infinitesimal point to bit by bit spread over the entire infinity of the universe. Put another way, perhaps that of which we are conscious grows until it becomes the entire universe.To live is a transitive. We are always aware of something. Right now, we are aware of our own bodies and their surroundings, perhaps, earlier, we were conscious of a single atom, and before that of a single particle and so on ad infinitum. Maybe we should not think of consciousness as something that arises from matter, but rather something that merely relies on it: we are aware of matter, and as such we could not be aware without matter as there would be nothing to be aware of; but that does not mean per se that matter causes consciousness.If our consciousness has grown from a infinitely close to nothing over an infinitely long time, it is reasonable to assume that it will continue to grow towards infinity, though possibly never fully reaching it. In fact, relative to future, infinite levels of consciousness, our current level of consciousness would then still be infinitesimal. This is merely a question of frame of reference.I would like to emphasize that this is merely a hypothesis, and not my personal belief. Consciousness is probably by far the most mysterious thing in the universe, and since it cannot be observed, we can only hope to understand it through pure logic. But logic, too, can be flawed. I still believe each of the three scenario's (infinity, finity, or nothing) to be possible and favor none of these; but my hopes are that we will, sooner or later, reach infinity. If we do, however, the question still remains if we will do so in a finite amount of time, or if we can only approach it over an infinitely long time.

Odd and Ordinary Dead People

2008-12-19T22:59:54+01:00

Like many people, my favourite section of the newspaper is the obituaries. Some papers are better than others, and the Portland Press Herald in Maine is one of the best I've found for homey, chatty, detailed, quirky obits. Among the 5-15 obits that appear most days are some people who have led unusual lives and who have done extraordinary and ordinary things. And then there are the descriptors, some of which appear in almost every obituary ("deceased was happiest when spending time with family" in obituaries written by ... well, the family) and some of which you'll only read once in a lifetime.

Some clips from obits I've enjoyed in the last week or two:

"He enjoyed watching Nascar and having a Bud Light. " (Lance Morton, b. 1948?)

"She collected music boxes, dolls and unicorns." (Roberta S. Potvin, b. 1926)

"In his spare time he enjoyed clock repair." (David L. Adams Sr., b. 1939)

"He was a brilliant applied mathematician and solved one of his mathematical problems on the Eniac. ... Between 1963 and 1968, he was the first solo circumnavigator to sail in a fiberglass boat. His trip took him through the Panama Canal, onto Cape Horn, and around the Cape of Good Hope. ... Other work included participation in seeding clouds in order to create clear spaces over airports and lead capsule protection that shielded the men on Admiral Rickovers' first nuclear-powered submarine." (Alan Gates Eddy, b. 1930)

"On a king-size Tempurpedic, holding the hands of her daughter and new son-in-law, May Madeline Carter took her last breath, closed her eyes and left her body; instant peace filled the loving home of three. May's final days on Earth were comfortable, serene, and beautiful. In her last hours, May could not say a word; her shirt said, 'Love is all you need.'" (May Madeline Carter, b. 1951?)

"His leisure time was spent walking the streets of his beloved town, riding his bicycle or driving his muscle car. He loved the town, the woods, the tracks and the beach. He will be sadly missed by all those who have loved him, known him or have laughed with him, including his pug, Maevis Pudge, and his tuxedo cat, Mandy Marie." (David M. Couri, b. 1958)

"She loved lighthouses and went on a lighthouse tour of the Cape with her sons and their wives to celebrate her 70th birthday. She was an avid football fan. Her favorite team was the Green Bay Packers, particularly Brett Favre. She studied every aspect of the game and had won some fantasy football leagues. She was especially proud of the week that she picked every game in the NFL right. ... Another joy of hers was to sit peacefully on her porch observing nature and watching the birds come and go from her feeders." (Joanne Marie Parks, b. 1932)

"Although she was a brilliant hairdresser, the job May truly accelerated [sic?] in was motherhood." (May Madeline Carter, b. 1951?)

"Joseph was always on the move and could often be found repairing small engines. He had a very unique way of sharing his opinions." (Joseph 'Grandpa Joe' E. Lanham Jr., b. 1932?)

"She loved her family dearly and lived through her children." (Laurabelle Wing Small, b. 1942)

"Hans' enjoyed three hobbies during his life, tournament chess, stamp collecting, and building several large format H.O. scale model railroad layouts." (Dr. Hans Willem Verleur, b. 1932)

"There was always plenty to eat and drink for anyone who happened to stop by. Ed was very proud of his backyard garden, where he grew a beautiful mix of vegetable and flowers. He loved to fish and make daily shopping trips to most of the supermarkets in Southern Maine." (Edmund Wilfred Rombalski, b. 1939)

"Mrs. Small was very fond of gardening and keeping up the grounds of her home and also, keeping a very tidy household. She enjoyed preparing holiday meals for her family and enjoyed having her family around her. She was a feisty woman right up till the end." (Laurabelle Wing Small, b. 1942)

"May encouraged, supported, admired, and inspired her children; they were simply her universe. Unfortunately, May suffered the loss of her mother, father, stepfather, son and two brothers. Finding out cancer would reunite her with these losses brought joy to a special place in her heart." (May Madeline Carter, b. 1951?)

"She was a head surgical nurse in brain surgery at University Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. ... The Walls traveled extensively, including a four and a half month trip around the world on a freighter. ... Above all, she loved a good party." (Ruth Alberta Walls, b. 1908)

"She was a simple woman who loved vegetable gardening, cooking and making quilts." (Marjory J. Greenleaf, b. 1926)

"Her interests were varied. She enjoyed hunting and fishing, skeet shooting and motorcycles." (Margaret 'Peggy' Beaudoin, n.d.)

"In his free time, Robert enjoyed puttering around his home." (Robert E.L. Stevens, b. 1935?)

"She was a loving mother and grandmother who taught her family to 'believe in the Lord with all your heart and he will show you the way.'" (Mary Ann Lakin, b. 1943?)

"Her favorite memories of that time involved sledding before breakfast in the winter ...." (Katherine Jewell Fiori, b.1951)

"Her favorite week of the year was the one she spent with Terry and her family in Jonesport every summer. She enjoyed doing crossword puzzles, e-mailing her friends and family, and spending time with her cats Gert and Mary, who will miss her dearly." (Dona J. DeRoche, b. 1942)

"Valeriye's greatest passions were her love for the Lord, her family, and her country." (Valeriye R. Johnston, b. 1935?)

"He often noted that having been raised by Victorians synchronized his values to an earlier generation." (David W. Adams, b. 1923?)

"She was never without a book in the evening. ... One of her other interests was tap dancing, and she would often entertain at family and school reunions." (Janet B. Lynds, b. 1919)

"Decked out in his favorite duck billed cap, a plaid shirt, glasses, comfortable shoes, and mostly brown pants, he never seemed to be in a bad mood." (Franklyn Hunter Goldsmith, b. 1914)

"He was enthusiastic about sports, particularly baseball, and at one point in his life was able to attend every single world series game for 24 consecutive seasons." (Carl Roger Wright, b. 1925)

"In 1972 he bought a cabin in Friendship, coming closer to his childhood dream of being a lighthouse keeper. A fourth-generation Freemason, he often headed out in a dory to fish with fellow Mason and curmudgeon, Jake Overlock, for silence and Jake's recitations of the Masonic ritual. ... He loved breakfast out with friends and family and a good joke, although he never could remember the punch line." (David W. Adams, b. 1923?)

"Wayne enjoyed swimming, fishing and mowing the lawn." (Wayne P. Hobart, b. 1958)

"She also enjoyed traveling, camping, gardening, flower-arranging, bowling, archery, painting, playing the piano, sewing, needlework, and reading." (May Harmon Rowe, b. 1924)

"Buff found her first, true avocation as a tender, empathetic mother, bearing three children over six years. She taught by example, always having time for conversation and play." (Elizabeth 'Buff' Grant McDonald, b. 1938)

"Fran became engaged to Jack in Tuckerman's Ravine, was married in Cape Elizabeth and honeymooned aboard the 'Loon,' their friendship sloop. ... Frannie was a natural athlete. She played golf at Purpoodock Golf Course and won the President's Cup at age 88. ... [S]he finally gave up her downhill skis when she was nearing 80, but continued to cross country ski when the snow conditions allowed." (Frances Dana Jordan, b. 1918)

"Kay was a strong and independent woman before it was common. During the 1940s, she would drive a florist truck full of flowers and vegetables to sell at Haymarket Square in Boston." (Katherine Pilsbury Cobb Mercier, b. 1914)

"Donald enjoyed playing bingo and going to the Casinos at Foxwood and Las Vegas." (Donald E. Cobb, b. 1944)

"Florence is predeceased by two infants ...." (Florence R. Gray, b. 1919)

"He was planning to work in Dubai in January." (Fred A. Pickering III, b. 1952?)

"Connor D. Chute was born and died on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008, at Southern Maine Medical Center, Biddeford. He was the first born child of Michael C. and Kelly J. (Noel) Chute. ... 'Curious George will be watching over you.'" (Connor D. Chute, b. 2008)

and this one, almost in full:

James A. Creighton Jr., 89 THOMASTON -- One of Thomaston and Cushing's notable characters passed away early Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008.

James A. Creighton Jr., a World War II veteran, was 89 years old. Jim Creighton was born in Harrisburg, Pa., but moved as a boy to the town of Hamburg in western New York. He worked summers during high school in the blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel and later studied metallurgy at the 'hardest college I could find,' which turned out to be the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Certainly one of the proudest experiences of his life was his Naval service, for which he volunteered before the war started. He served in every theater of war except the Indian Ocean, as an engineering and deck officer, first on a minesweeper and then a destroyer escort rising eventually to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. On the early part of his service, his ship guarded supplies for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, was assigned to the Mediterranean and North African landings, and guarded against submarines in the North Sea. Later as the war progressed, Jim joined the Pacific fleet and participated in the invasion of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. In 1945 his ship was put out of action by the attack of a Kamikaze plane.

He told so many war stories about his Naval adventures-including being washed overboard in the mid-Atlantic -- that his wife urged him to write them down, and his book, No More War Stories, is in its second printing.

Jim stayed in the Navy through 1951 and returned to Bethlehem Steel as a metallurgical engineer, working in the Lackawanna and Burns Harbor, Indiana Plants. He was promoted to Superintendent of the Burns Harbor plant in 1967.

After his retirement he moved to midcoast Maine, where his family had lived since the early eighteenth century-one David Creighton, in fact, had been separated from his scalp during a fort battle in the 1730s. His family eventually became sailors, shipmasters, shipbuilders and lime manufacturers in Thomaston. In his retirement, he worked enthusiastically for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and the Maine Highway Commission.

He himself embraced unusual driving techniques. One of his more dubious practices was his 'moose avoidance procedure,' which entailed driving close, if not on, the dividing line, in rural Knox County. This permitted him to prepare for animals emerging on either side of the road.

As an eager competitor throughout life, Jim Creighton helped organize and build community skating rinks for hockey games, construct tennis courts, and invented a type of duplicate bridge. 'Bridge Match' is regularly played in and around Knox County. His love of numbers and statistics extended to his golf playing and his health. His physician compared his blood pressure records to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jim will be remembered not only for his optimism, loyalty, and leadership, but also for his love of sailing, tennis, bird watching, and the Boston Red Sox.

He loved 'hunkering down' in Maine winters. He will no doubt be remembered as well for his eccentric opinions. Known within the family as Gump, he was also referred to as Captain Budget, and his pronouncements about life, money, and manners were kept in a red notebook. He proclaimed early on, for example, that he wanted 'one dog, one cat, one wife or any combination thereof,' but the limits he set in the animal line were never honored. His family pets besides numerous dogs and cats over the years included white rats (complete with their own apartment complex), a green heron named Pookie, and an enterprising crow named Woody. In his later years he and his cracked corn earned a devoted following among the mallard duck and seagull populations in Pleasant Point, Cushing.

What I'm Reading Lately ... Death, Death and Certainty

2008-10-27T16:21:00+01:00

My irregular annotated link dump:

>> Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death by Jesse Bering in the 22 Oct. 2008 SciAm:

The crux: "So why is it so hard to conceptualize inexistence anyway? Part of my own account, which I call the 'simulation constraint hypothesis,' is that in attempting to imagine what it's like to be dead we appeal to our own background of conscious experiences -- because that's how we approach most thought experiments. Death isn't 'like' anything we've ever experienced, however. Because we have never consciously been without consciousness, even our best simulations of true nothingness just aren't good enough."

Fun for the Whole Family: "In a 2004 study reported in Developmental Psychology, Florida Atlantic University psychologist David F. Bjorklund and I presented 200 three- to 12-year-olds with a puppet show. Every child saw the story of Baby Mouse, who was out strolling innocently in the woods. 'Just then,' we told them, 'he notices something very strange. The bushes are moving! An alligator jumps out of the bushes and gobbles him all up. Baby Mouse is not alive anymore.'"

What We Can't UnLearn: "Back when you were still in diapers, you learned that people didn't cease to exist simply because you couldn't see them. Developmental psychologists even have a fancy term for this basic concept: 'person permanence.' Such an off-line social awareness leads us to tacitly assume that the people we know are somewhere doing something. ... We can't simply switch off our person-permanence thinking just because someone has died. This inability is especially the case, of course, for those whom we were closest to and whom we frequently imagined to be actively engaging in various activities when out of sight."

>> For a Fee, a Thai Temple Offers a Head Start on Rebirth by Seth Mydans in the NYT, 26 Sept. 2008. (Reminds me of a vividly described scene in the movie My Dinner with Andre.) What interests me about the Thai story is the explicit connection between anxiety due to the state of the economy (i.e., decline in prosperity) and the need for this kind of burial and resurrection ritual:

"Nine big pink coffins dominate the grand hall of the temple, and every day hundreds of people take their turns climbing in for a [minute and a half] as monks chant a dirge. Then, at a command, the visitors clamber out again cleansed -- they believe -- of the past. ... A cardboard sign warns visitors not to stand behind the coffins, where bad karma sucked from the 'dying' devotees may still be hovering ...

"It is a renewal for our times, as recent economic hardship brings uncertainty and people try seeking a bailout on life. In growing numbers, they come here from around Thailand to join what has become an assembly line of resurrection.

"'When the economy is down, we latch our hopes onto some supernatural power,' said Ekachai Uekrongtham, the writer-director whose movie The Coffin is in Thai cinemas now with a plot revolving around such funerals for the living."

>> Psychology Voting: 'My Candidate, Myself,' by Robert Burton in Salon, 22 Sept. 2008 (I previously cited Burton's work on certainty when it appeared in a 9 Oct. SciAm piece): The lead-off quote is this: "Let's make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times" -- George W. Bush, 2008.

Burton laments humans' inability to change our minds, to view our own opinions with skepticism, to refuse to be swayed by logical appeal.

He cites a 1999 paper reporting on a study of Cornell undergraduates, which found that the most incompetent people overestimate their abilities to the greatest degree. In other words, "People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else's." And, conversely, "smart people tend to believe that everyone else 'gets it.'" They overestimate other people's abilities.

Further: "Closely allied with this unshakable self-confidence in one's decisions is a second separate aspect of meta-cognition, the feeling of being right. ... [F]eelings of conviction, certainty and other similar states of 'knowing what we know' may feel like logical conclusions, but are in fact involuntary mental sensations that function independently of reason. ... The evidence is substantial that these feelings do not correlate with the accuracy or quality of the thought." And, "Like other powerful mental states such as love, anger and fear, they are extraordinarily difficult to dislodge through rational arguments."

He cites another study in which "staunch party members from both sides" are asked to "evaluate negative (defamatory) information about their 2004 presidential choice:

"Areas of the brain (prefrontal cortex) normally engaged during reasoning failed to show increased activation. Instead, the limbic system -- the center for emotional processing -- lit up dramatically. ...'[B]oth Republicans and Democrats 'reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted.'"

Burton suggests that we would know more about our political candidates if we could give them thought experiments that would demonstrate how they think. He'd also like to focus on "each candidate's intellectual grasp of scientific method, from choosing and evaluating evidence to seeing how they would respond to a well-constructed contrary line of reasoning." And what do they do when they are presented with evidence that their answers are wrong? Can the candidates recognise their intellectual limitations? And can we?

Not What We Deserve

2008-10-02T00:14:00+02:00

House: People get what they get. It's got nothing to do with what they deserve. (House MD, ep. 5x01, Death Changes Everything)

Reminds me of a (fictional?) poem quoted in a crime novel I read on my vacation:

"People don't die because they're bad.

They die because they're available." (The Falls, Ian Rankin)

Never To Be

2008-09-07T18:15:00+02:00

Love

was served

on a silver platter

but unconsumed

we let it lay

though our starving hearts

beat loud

In silence

we denied ourselves

the undeniable

for both our hand

already given

forced us

to hold out

Time

it wasn't on our side

but hope

never far away

and though

we couldn't speak our heart

the promise of tomorrow

gave strength

But now

death has come

to end the dreams

that sneaked in mind

and I must let you go

crying secret tears

in a heart

already drenched

Death of a Mother

2008-09-01T02:25:00+02:00

Who wouldn’t get stressed because of a mother’s death? Even tough woman Angelina Jolie lost weight last year because her mother died. How much more do we expect from Ely Buendia who had heart surgery last year and lost his mother two days before the concert?

Stress can either be positive or negative. I think the recent cut-concert last Saturday with thousands of fans who attended was really overwhelming. It was a positive stress to Ely’s heart. But stress is a stress.

Enough. Wala akong balak mag-layout ng inference or disease process dito. XD

Music:

Eraserheads - Pare Ko

His back to the fire

2008-08-24T12:25:00+02:00

"My father took a camera everywhere. He took photos of everything. He had separate photo albums for sad photos. He said these were just as important. The pictures in these albums were of family funerals, of my mother returning from being fired at work, of my brother after he broke his wrist trying to jump over a tennis net. There were pictures of each of us having just vomited, or holding a failing test mark, or the moment after we found the cockatoo or the team we were supporting had lost. There was a picture of me, aged nine, looking up at the camera. In the middle of the night, I had knocked on my parents’ bedroom door. I was holding my blanket and in tears because I didn’t want to die. My father held the camera steady and pressed the button."

I started my photography career this way (still have the photos to prove it) but fast learned that others found my observational interest in their sadness and pain to be evidence of a cruel, cold, harsh, mechanical, sick, aloof, unsisterly, and decidedly misaligned heart and soul. The zoom lens circumvents some of the judgment but not entirely.

Anyway, read Crispin Best's essay. ... "My father seldom insulted people and only ever by using the names of edible fish: flathead, pilchard, pollock or scrod."

Leroy Died (1955-2008)

2008-08-18T23:20:00+02:00

As I've mentioned, I've read the NPR blog of journalist and Nightline producer Leroy Sievers' battle with cancer for a couple of years now. (I wouldn't call it a battle but he did.) I was away all week and when I returned home on Sunday afternoon, I found that Leroy had died rather suddenly on Friday night at his Maryland home, at age 53, just three days after he and his wife decided to contact hospice. It was a shock. I knew he was dying but I hadn't expected it this soon. His last post, the day before, was about a stuffed Bernese Mountain dog, sitting on the bed with him.

More at ABC News. And NPR. And NYT. There's a memorial fund set up.

(Photo of Leroy with his wife Laurie Singer.)

Human Brutality - Part of One Day

2008-08-01T02:30:00+02:00

I realise lots of good things happened today, all over the world. But checking CNN headline news this evening, here's what I found:

Bus passenger beheaded seat mate, witness says, in Manitoba, Canada. More, including identity of killer and victim, but still no motive. (2 Aug update: It gets worse.)

Preacher killed wife, stuffed body in freezer, police say, near Mobile, Alabama. He did this in Nov. 2004, when his wife caught him abusing his daughter, and he hid his wife's body with the help of the teenaged daughter he had been abusing. He's apparently been preaching ever since. (His resemblance to E.T. is remarkable ...)

Killer 'photographed mutilated girlfriend', in Goiania, Brazil. He dismembered her, photographed her with his cell phone, and stuffed her torso into a suitcase. The girlfriend was going to "tell his parents he was a drug dealer addicted to cocaine." More.

Sexual assault in military 'jaw-dropping,' lawmaker says. Forty-one percent of women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military and twenty-nine percent report being raped during their military service.

As the Wicked Witch says, "What a world, what a world ..." -- but the witch was bemoaning the loss of her wickedness to a good little girl who was just trying to save her scarecrow friend ...

What I'm Reading Lately: Death, Dog Poisoning, Novelty, Flawed Heroes, Psych Experiments, Limiting Generalisations

2008-07-24T12:15:00+02:00

A mish-mash of my recent online reading, pondering, etc.

>> Alpine murder mystery: Are sheepdogs being poisoned to save the grey wolf? (Independent, 18 July 2008):

So far this year, 17 sheepdogs (including Great Pyrenees) have been poisoned -- with slug poison placed inside pork meatballs -- in the high Maurienne mountains, just inside the French border with Italy. The killings seem to stem from an ongoing dispute between sheep-lovers (and shepherds) and wolf-lovers. "'The pork meat balls were left, some time during the night, most likely just before dawn, in a place where the dogs would be sure to find them. This is the work of a maniac – a madman. What if the meat had been found by a small child? There are tourists everywhere at this time of year, including many British tourists.'"

"The dogs have often died in great agony.... [The poison] causes instant and catastrophic diarrhoea and lung failure in small mammals like dogs. 'They finish up dying completely dehydrated but, before that, they drown in their own bronchial fluids.'"

There are about 100 wolves in France. There is a sheep-protection plan in place in the area, and there have been no wolf attacks on sheep in the Maurienne area for more than two years.

>> If you haven't read it yet, I recommend "Cancer & Creativity: One Chef’s True Story" (Food & Wine, July 2008):

"While undergoing treatment for tongue cancer, Grant Achatz temporarily lost his ability to taste. Paradoxically, it taught him brilliant new ways to create flavor."

>> Impossible Experiments (Psychology Today, 1 July 2008) is a small collection of research psychologists would like to do "if neither ethics nor practical reality stood in your way." What interests me is that almost all the comments (so far) are about one hypothesis, that how parents raise their kids doesn't influence them significantly. The experiment I would jump on is Tamler Sommers' "Another Man's Shoes." (The YouTube video at the end makes clear that the whole thing is a joke ... or is it?) Other never-done experiments.

>> "Our Infantile Search for Heroic Leaders" by Johann Hari (26 June 2008, Independent). Hari's thesis is two-fold: That there are no perfectly good leaders and that we can't expect leaders to solve our problems because "every civilising advance in history ... was won because ordinary people banded together and agitated for it." Not much new there, but what interested me about this article was Hari's critique of Mandela, Gandhi, and Churchill as flawed leaders. I never knew that Churchill, for instance, was "strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." His portrayal of Gandhi as a murderer (of his wife) seems overdone, not because I don't believe it's possible but because even as Hari presents it, it sounds more like a matter of adhering to principles in one case (his wife's illness) and not in another (his own illness), a rather ordinary though insidious trait.

>> Reframing Questions by Dave Pollard at How To Save the World (16 July 2008) seeks to promote critical thinking, to help us think beyond our own "false myths and limiting generalizations." He gives some examples of some limiting myths and generalisations he encounters everyday in business, then reframes the questions, and then asks his readers: "What are the false myths and limiting generalizations that you are struggling with, and how might you use appropriate questions to reframe them, disempower them, put them to rest?" Some day I may give some energy to it and respond to that challenge here.

>> "Why We Like New Stuff" (Mental Floss, 16 July 2008). Basically, "our brains are actually hard-wired to prefer novelty and adventure. ... In fact, research on the ventral striatum (the part of the brain associated with rewarding behavior) seems to indicate that sating our sense of adventure provides us the same sort of satisfaction we get from sex and food." Dopamine figures, too. Full study (7 pages, PDF).

>> "Italian Outrage Over Roma Drowning Photos" (21 July 2008, CNN) is confusing to me. "Italian newspapers, an archbishop and civil liberties campaigners expressed shock and revulsion on Monday after photographs were published of sunbathers apparently enjoying a day at the beach just meters from where the bodies of two drowned Roma girls were laid out on the sand."

I think I might be creeped out if dead people were lying on the beach -- I'm creeped out when a dead seal or horseshoe crab is lying on the beach -- but the sunbathers' critics aren't shocked that they're not repulsed enough, presumably; they're shocked that the sunbathers are indifferent to the bodies. Shocked that they can act as if they aren't there, that they can do what they would ordinarily do without creating a sacred space for the bodies, without making their deaths the focus. That doesn't seem so bad to me. In any important way, the girls are not there, so why regard the dead bodies as something sacred, something whose presence means we should act differently than we do ordinarily? I guess it's because death is seen as such a powerful force.

The Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe, said in his blog that "'To turn the other way or to mind your own business can sometimes be more devastating than the events that occur.'" I'd agree if the girls were injured or needed lifesaving efforts; then it would be cruel to be indifferent. But I don't see how the sunbathers' can really mind the dead girls' business now, or why they should.

I've been in the presence of someone in the moments of her death, and in the presence of her body, as it lay in her house, for a couple of hours after that. The moment of dying, yes, that felt like something happened, something a little unusual and yet not, like breathing in and out. But for the hours afterwards? My experience was that life went on in its ordinary way. If I hadn't felt that all along that morning, I would have when the mortuary folks came with their plastic garbage-like bag and heaved her body into it. It was about as sacred-seeming as bodies under beach towels on a sunny day.

(In a twisted way, it kinda reminds me of this ...)

Taking A Life

2008-07-21T17:36:17+02:00

"When it became clear he wasn't going to move out of the way, I closed my eyes, covered my face and held my breath.

"By the time we were stationary, four of my eight cars were in the platform and I was on autopilot. I told the passengers there would be a delay in opening the doors due to an 'incident', and was calling the line controller for assistance when I heard a tap on my cab door. A smart man inquired, 'Do you know there's a person under your train?' I looked at the blood on the windscreen momentarily before assuring him that, yes, I was aware.

"He paused for a heartbeat, looked at his watch and said, 'So, how long before we get on the move again?'"

(from "Last Year I Killed a Man," by Vaughan Thomas, in the Guardian, 19 July 2008, via Scott)

More Funeral Stuff

2008-07-21T02:45:00+02:00

A short McSweeney's list: Phrases I'd Rather Not Be Used At My Funeral by Harry Burt, with my anxious additions:

"autoerotic asphyxiation" [likewise: "left 10-inch clawmarks"]

"found by cadaver dogs" ["according to the forensic entomologist"]

"hopped up on goofballs" ["ate her weight in Oreos"]

"minutes from rescue" ["last-second airline flight change"]

"prehensile tail" ["cascading sheets of mucus"]

["salvaged what we could," "leaned over the rim a smidge too far," "must have been in unimaginable pain," "what's that on his forehead? 'syawliarT'?"]

Legacy

2008-07-18T17:35:00+02:00

When all that's left of me

will be small reminiscences

fragmented in others minds

I hope they'll be the ones

that carry laughter

and happiness

the fun

and sunny days

the tenderness

and love we shared

instead

of the tears

and the rain

Favourite Funeral Music

2008-07-15T18:30:00+02:00

Looking for music for your memorial service? Check out these ideas, which include the Monty Python song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'; Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem (Kempe or Klemperer versions, 79 minutes long); Bach's 'Sleepers Awake;' Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy;' Gillian Welch's 'I Dream A Highway;' Crash Test Dummies' 'At My Funeral;' requiems of Verdi, Faure, and Mozart; AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' ...

(My list includes, at the moment, Louis Armstrong's 'What A Wonderful World,' Kate Smith's 'I'll Be Seeing You,' and either Ella's or Bobby Short's 'They Can’t Take That Away from Me')

Solutions: Religion (Notes from Status Anxiety)

2008-07-14T12:00:00+02:00

Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the tenth post on this topic; the first is here.

PART II: Solutions

CHAPTER 4 - RELIGION

Death

Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan llyich (1886) is a Christian memento mori. Ivan Ilyich is all about status. When he realises he's going to die, he recognises he's wasted his time on Earth by leading an outwardly respectable but inwardly barren life. He always wanted to appear important and to impress people whom, he sees now, don't care for him at all. Those around him love his status, not his true vulnerable self.

The prospect of death may cause us to do what matters most to us and to pay less attention to the verdicts of others. We see we cannot "afford to defer forever, for the sake of propriety, our underlying commitments to ourselves."

Ruins! They comfort us, reveal our "punishingly high-minded sense of the gravity of what we are doing," our own exaggerated self-importance. Our miseries are tied to the grandiosity of our ambitions.

Community

We all have the same vulnerabilities and the same two driving forces: fear, and a desire for love.

The Christian would say that there is no such thing as a stranger, "only an impression of strangeness born of failure to acknowledge that others share both our needs and our weaknesses."

Christianity attempts to enhance the value we place on community -- through ritual (a transcendent intermediary) and through music (great leveller and social alchemist -- we see that others respond as we do, which forges connection).

Twin Cities

Jesus is the model for Christians' understanding of status. He has two different sides, as ordinary carpenter and as the holiest of men. We can see the difference between earthly status (determined by occupation, income, others' opinions) and spiritual status (related to one's soul and merits in God's eyes).

The City of God, Augustine, 427 AD: All human action can be interpreted from either the Christian or the Roman (earthly) perspective, which are different. Christian status derives from humility, generosity, recognition of one's dependence on God, etc.

Divine Comedia, Dante, 1315: Dante's Hell is home to many who enjoyed high status while they lived.

Christian lore asserts the superiority of spiritual over material success and endows its virtues with "a seductive seriousness and beauty" through music, art, literature, architecture, etc. "Through its command of aesthetic resources, of buildings, paintings and Masses, Christianity created a bulwark against the authority of earthly values and kept its spiritual concerns in the public eye."

Heydey of cathedrals, 1130-1530.

Christianity never abolished the Earthly City or its values, but that we retain any distinction between wealth and virtue is largely due to the impression left on Western consciousness by Christianity.

A Day Like Today

2008-07-13T12:50:00+02:00

I imagine that on a day like today

when the sun shines early and the sky's a spotless blue

while warm winds thicken the air with heat and dust

and temperature gets clothes sticking hot

it'll be a good day for me to let go

For on such a day when no one seems to be in a hurry

and hours pass notably slow

I guess the reaper can take his time too

maybe even show me some special kindness

and let me pick a nice moment myself

Maybe then I'd choose to go when children's laughter

and splish-splash from their cooling pools

come in from neighbouring gardens

drowning out the women's chit-chat

over iced teas and turkey sandwiches

while I picture myself amongst them

with my own dear little ones

Or maybe I'd wait for the hounds to bark in the distance

aroused by the smells of summer cooking

slowly fusing with the blooming jasmine's scent

while the old men's glory day tales

coming up from the bench below

make me laugh deep and hearty

and let me relive my own glory as I go

Or what about when in early evening the cafés fill

for cold drinks and ice cream treats

while the Quarter slowly comes alive

with my favourite songs of woe and goodbye

and the streets stay vibrant until late

Maybe I could dream myself down there

sipping my favourite old fashioned

while the cloaked man patiently waits

and then as I drink a toast to life

maybe that would be the perfect moment

on a beautiful day like today

that seemed so dead endless

The Day..

2008-06-15T06:50:00+02:00

15th June.. The day has arrived once again.. 2 years have passed. Two whole fucking years. The day which was suposed to be the happiest day of my life, turned out to be saddest.

You are gone, though you are still remembered.

REY!

Prison

2008-06-13T11:00:14+02:00

Last April, I woke up one morning to be told my cousin had been in a car accident and was lying in hospital, critically injured. The two passengers of the second car had died. My mum was distraught. I felt slightly numb, not knowing what to do in this situation, worrying if he was going to be ok. We shortly found out there was a question as to his alcohol blood level at the time of the crash. My cousin was devastated. He couldn’t believe he’d killed two people, an elderly mother and her daughter. One moment, one evening of stupidity, and two families’ lives had been ruined. He had had three pints over the space of three hours or so. I know it’s inexcusable, but I can’t find it in me to blame him. I think it would have happened whether he’d been drinking or not. Three weeks ago, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, needing to serve at least 2.5 years. He was sent to a category A prison until they found somewhere else for him. Category A is where they hold extreme escape-risk offenders, killers, sex offenders. My cousin, who rightly accepts his sentence, commented on the disgusting, grimy, cockroach-infested state of the prison. I feel I should comment on this, as I was speaking to some people recently, who seem to think prison life is a luxurious and easy one. It is indeed a punishment, if for the disgusting surroundings, the lack of contact with people, being stuck in the same small cell for 22 hours a day. True, there are some unexpected ‘luxuries’, my cousin has a television in his cell and a toilet. Those who think these things as luxury need only to put them in the context of imprisonment and cell confinement. The main thing I’ve learnt from all of this is how much the decisions of one person affect so many others. Not only have the family of the deceased been destroyed by what’s happened, the family of my cousin have crumpled. The day after the sentencing, my elderly Nan said to my mum, ‘I just can’t see the point in getting up and getting dressed’. For someone of her age, who has suffered a lot in the past few years, it’s too much to cope with. I don’t think my cousins parents will ever forgive themselves or him, for this. In the year since it’s happened, they’ve turned from a happy, youthful family, to one burdened with guilt, which is clearly visible on their faces, every time you see them. I still can’t quite comprehend what has happened here, that someone I know has caused this misery. None of us will ever forget, or fully forgive him. I feel for him though. He put himself in this position, but was in a way, unlucky that the result was so extreme. There are so many things that could have been different. I want to write to him in prison, but I don’t just want to send a letter. I thought about writing him a comic strip, so he has something different to occupy his mind, something to keep him alert, to get him away from the monotony of his life. Not that I’m an artist, or have even any vague art skills, but it’s something to do, and it might help both me and him and give us purpose. I need some inspiration. Having recently read ‘Persepolis’, which I found both humourous and informative, I’d like to do something along these lines, but without coming across too preachy. I need a character. I considered doing a strip based on the character ‘Falco’ from the Lindsey Davis novels (roman private eye, with a sharp wit and a mischievious smile). But I’m open to anything.Any ideas?

Nuala O'Faolain RIP (1940 - 2008)

2008-05-26T11:50:00+02:00

Have you heard about Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain's response to her terminal diagnosis? I'm very attracted to the way she chose to live her last months, to her grief and depression as she says goodbye to what she finds meaningful and beautiful, and to her honesty as she faces the end of her time on earth.

The Guardian has the story and obituary; below are some excerpts from an interview with her at independent.ie in mid-April. She died on 9 May, about two-and-a-half months after her diagnosis, at age 68:

"I was just reading about some best-selling man who says 'Live your dream to the end' and so on and I don't despise anyone who does, but I don't see it that way. Even if I gained time through the chemotherapy it isn't time I want. Because as soon as I knew I was going to die soon, the goodness went out of life. ...

"It amazed me, Marian, how quickly life turned black, immediately almost.

"For example, I lived somewhere beautiful, but it means nothing to me anymore -- the beauty. For example, twice in my life I have read the whole of Proust. I know it sounds pretentious, but it's not a bit. It's like a huge soap opera. But I tried again the week before last and it was gone, all the magic was gone from it.

"And I'm not nice or anything -- I'm not getting nicer. I'm sour and difficult you know. I don't know how my friends and family are putting up with me, but they are, heroically. And that is one of the things you learn."

"You see, the cancer is a very ingenious enemy and when you ask somebody how will I actually die? How do you actually die of cancer ?... I don't get an answer because It could be anything.

"It can move from one organ to the other, it can do this that or the other. It's already in my liver, for example. So I don't know how it's going to be. And that overshadows everything."

She says that she doesn't believe in an afterlife, or an individual creator, and goes on:

"Let poor human beings believe what they want, but to me its meaningless. ... And yet I want to mention one thing that you might play at the end, particularly for dying people, ... a song I heard a few years ago 'Thois I Lar an Glanna' -- a kind of modern song sung by Albert Fry and other Donegal singers. And the last two lines are two things, asking God up there in the heavens, even though you don't believe in him, to send you back even though you know it can't happen. Those two things sum up where I am now. (Crying)"

"I am sick, but I am trying to say goodbye. So much has happened and it seems such a waste of creation that with each death all that knowledge dies. [and all that experience ... ]

"I think there's a wonderful rule of life that means that we do not consider our own mortality. I know we seem to, and remember, 'man thou art but dust', but I don't believe we do. I believe there is an absolute difference between knowing that you are likely to die, let's say within the next year, and not knowing when you are going to die -- an absolute difference."

The interviewer asks: "One of the things that you wrote about and wrote about is that what you thought mattered in life was passion?" to which O'Faolain responds:
"That seems a bit silly now. What matters now in life is health and reflectiveness. I just shot around. I would like it if I had been a better thinker.

MF: What about the passion?

NO'F: The passion can go and take a running jump at itself, that's what it can take.

MF: And love?

NO'F: Well, love's different, but I always [get the] two mixed up anyway."

"I know everyone says the hair matters, but that is not true. You can put a little cap on or something for the hair. That is irrelevant compared with having to leave the world behind."

Termination of the Cycle

2008-05-18T09:00:00+02:00

As and when we achieve immortality, the cycle of birth and death for ourselves is terminated - but this termination is in itself part of the cycle.

Discovery of What Is

2008-05-15T15:01:23+02:00

With the comment interchange about paths and truth in my mind, and a sermon from worship recently also fresh, I came upon a chapter titled "Creation in Christ" in James Alison's On Being Liked that I think is useful in considering how we think about everything, and specifically in the context of this conversation about Truth, Reality, God, the "something" that Mike posits in his comments.

It's a chapter that challenges the usual way of thinking about "the great panorama of Christian salvation," which is linear and logical: first creation, then fall, then salvation, then heaven. Alison rearranges it all, coming from a fundamental insight that we can explain creation only from the vantage point of salvation. We're not external viewers. We see everything only from where we are now. As Alison says, "our access to creation is present, as is our access to the past. ... The only access we have to the past is the access for which our present understanding equips us." Obvious, yes, and easily unacknowledged.

He also posits that "the answer to the question 'Where do we come from?' is narrated from within the schemes of power and social order which are in force. And the answer tends to maintain and shore up this order. ... [T]he description of the origins comes from an understanding of 'social' salvation which was already in evidence within the group in question."

In other words, creation stories come from a group that feels successfully ordered and constituted, and the stories are used to explain how it all happened in a way that necessarily supports the current standing. "The description of what things 'are' is strictly dependent on what they now 'ought' to be. ... [T]he perception of God is tied to the social world." Alison's claim (and Girard's) is that the Jewish scriptures divert from the usual creation stories in important ways (read the book for more on that).

Alison's major argument in the chapter is that by detoxifying death, Jesus opens us all to creation as it is and to the possibility of participating in bringing creation into being, now, every day:

"Part of the process of the discovery of creation is the discovery of an astonishing freedom with respect to what is, since what is seen and perceived, and what is are different things. When we see and perceive, we do so still partially from within a world formed by our systems of order, of security, of identity, guaranteed in the last resort by death. And what is is not strictly attainable from within a mentality formed in this way."

(These sentences seem to me to go to the heart of both the problem with strict adherence or allegiance to a path (to a point where its protection requires a defense of what is perceived as 'the sacred') and also the desirability of emptying the mind of knowledge -- necessarily beholden to perception, to interpretation -- as a way towards an experience of what is.)

Alison goes on to say that "to the degree to which we cease to have our mind and heart formed by death, we cease having our mind formed by the perception that the social 'other'" is hostile or ambivalent, and we can discover that 'the other' is "benevolent, limpid, without ambivalence and without ambiguity. That is to say, the relationship between God and everything that is, is gratuitous and trustworthy. And if it is to be trusted, then we need not fear discovering the truth about what is, however little convenient that might seem in its social repercussions." His major point here is that what we discover is "something that is present, and able to be lived in the here and now." We can put into practice ourselves "the same overcoming of our culture shot through with death, trusting in a generosity that does not know death, and which will take care of us."

The tricky part of all this is that Alison's discovery about God or reality or what-have-you -- anything -- is discovered from the vantage point of where he is now. And my discovery, and yours.

(I'm on the road this week and don't have time to parse this further online but may return to it later.)

seed friday

2008-05-02T22:35:00+02:00

Please visit

2008-05-02T14:51:10+02:00

all parents, please visit my site for information to make sure your child is safe anywhere near the water.www.ceffoundation.org

Why no lifejackets

2008-05-01T16:09:00+02:00

How is it I left my son at a place that promised me to watch him close (Lifeguard was our babysitter)but wouldnt allow life jackets since they cause kids to play so rough. He was only there on his first day for 2 hours. How can I ever forgive myself and not be overbearing on my other kids?

Disgust, Boundaries and Mortality

2008-04-15T01:28:48+02:00

A long article in Psychology Today ("Mystery of disgust" by Erik D'Amato, 1998), examining what makes something disgusting, and why, contains this interesting bit:

"[E]ach area of disgust is, in its own way, a jarring reminder of our animal nature. The things that most disgust us -- defecating, dying, giving birth, eating dubious or unclean foods -- are the very traits we most conspicuously share with other animals.

"Perhaps it's no coincidence that the only body product we generally don't find disgusting is tears -- the only one considered uniquely human.

"Social disgust operates much the same way, according to [Jonathan] Haidt: 'If physical disgust is about distinguishing ourselves from animals, then social disgust is about distinguishing ourselves from "demons." "Human being" is a charged category, and we want to keep its boundaries clearly defined. Someone who cheats on his taxes can be human; someone who eats human flesh cannot. Socially disgusting acts are those that reveal that you have inhuman motives.'"

"The reason such reminders of our 'animality' are so harrowing may be equally uncomplicated: any reminder of our animal nature is also a reminder of our own mortality. Certainly, we can coolly discuss death and even come to terms with it; indeed, the knowledge of life's precariousness is singularly human. But it is also the most crucial threat to the psyche, and as such must be repressed. No wonder so much of what we find disgusting relates to death and illness: blood, boils, amputations, and mutilations suggest the fragility of life; corpses and body parts simply verify it."

So -- things disgust us to the extent that they remind us that we, like all animals, die?

What interests me particularly about this is that many of the people I've known in real life and through books who have been most willing to sacrifice their very lives for others' benefit -- which amounts to a "crucial threat to the psyche" -- have also been those most easily disgusted and repulsed by hospitals, corpses, bodily functions gone awry, and physical mutilations.

What's going on there?

via TMN

New York Stories: The Death Stakes, Table Waiting, and Driving in the City

2008-03-31T17:45:00+02:00

Several today:

In the NYT, an article today about people who eschew public transportation in NYC, although "80 percent of the people who drive into Manhattan during the workday already have access to mass transit that would take no more than 15 minutes longer." Some of the reasons for driving even with cheap and reliable public transportation available: include enhanced freedom and flexibility; "the ability to avoid dealing with other people;" the car is more comfortable (plusher, wired for sound and ... video?); dislike of waiting, standing, and "the hassle" of the subway (prefering the hassle of driving, finding a place to park, having to feed the meter multiple times); a desire for a few minutes more sleep; dislike of walking; and transporting a dog.

---

In the Telegraph today, Phoebe Damrosch provides tantalising bits of her experience as a head waiter in a posh and celebrity-frequented NYC restaurant. Her book about it, Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter, was published in September. Training for the job was a rigorous 3-month indoctrination into rules, cooking procedures and ingredients, "philosophies, uniforms, elaborate rituals and an unspoken code of honour."

Allergies were ubiquitous: "When we learnt in the pre-shift meeting that, due to a serious allergy, the host [a famous comedian] requested there be no truffles on the menu, a colleague leaned over and whispered, 'What percentage of the population even knows it's allergic to truffles?'" and "Celebrities love to be allergic to things, including any or all of the following: nuts, fish with scales, fish without scales, shellfish, all fish, wheat, dairy, sugar, chocolate, egg yolks, duck eggs, onions, garlic, pineapple, mango, peppers, fennel -- the list goes on. Either that or they are so bored by good food that they have to spice it up by asking for an all-mushroom tasting menu (as a famous newsreader did)."

More at Super Chef, The Amateur Gourmet, NYT review.

---

This one's not about NYC per se :-) but after watching a few episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City -- where there's pathetically cut-throat competition to look young, to seem hip, to have status -- I feel sure it applies. It's Michael Kinsley in The New Yorker writing about the competition among Boomers, in particular, for "longest life" and "shortest death." (Kinsley himself is 57 and has Parkinson's disease.)

"What's more, of all the gifts that life and luck can bestow -- money, good looks, love, power -- longevity is the one that people seem least reluctant to brag about. In fact, they routinely claim it as some sort of virtue -- as if living to ninety were primarily the result of hard work or prayer, rather than good genes and never getting run over by a truck. Maybe the possibility that the truck is on your agenda for later this morning makes the bragging acceptable. The longevity game is one that really isn't over till it's over."

"And even if you add a few years through your own initiative, by doing all the right things in terms of diet, exercise, sleep, vitamins, and so on, why is that to your moral credit? Extending your own life expectancy is the most selfish motive imaginable for doing anything. Do it, by all means. I do. But for heaven’s sake don’t take a bow and expect applause."

He also points out that it's not a zero-sum game; if I die young, that doesn't mean you live longer. What's odd is that it seems like a zero-sum game. Reading the obituaries can imbue the completely false belief that because these folks have died, and particularly if they are younger than I am, then I'm spared. I'm alive, they're dead, I win. Weird. Kinsley does compare the competition to live longest to a tontine, an estate-planning device well-known to Agatha Christie fans, where "the amount you got back depended on how many of your fellow-investors you outlived." In this case, outliving someone else doesn't ensure that you will be long-lived (much less happily lived) but you'll be rewarded with a warm feeling of having out-endured your friends, enemies and peers, even as you miss them and wish they were still around.

As far as the short death goes, I must be the orderly type: "Or, if you’re the orderly type, you might prefer a brisk but not sudden slide into oblivion. Take a couple of months, pain-free but weakening in some vague nineteenth-century way." Sounds good to me. Of course, Kinsley reminds us, "The government statistics on how people die are lavish and fascinating. Let's forget for a moment that it's a catalogue you can't really shop from" (other than the suicide option).

Kinsley says, "I was around fifty when I went public about having Parkinson's, and the effect was like turning sixty." I love that sentence.

He goes on, "A person who is sixty and healthy almost surely will live many more years. But sixty is about the age when people stop being surprised if you look old or feel sick or drop dead. (It's another decade or so before they stop pretending to be surprised.)"

He says that "only in life's last chapter do the differences [in how old we feel and are perceived to be] get enormous. We are not shocked to see a seventy-one-year-old hobbling on a cane, or bedridden in a nursing home, and we are not shocked to see a seventy-one-year-old running for President. The huge variety of possible outcomes -- all of them falling within the range considered 'normal' -- makes the last boomer competition especially dramatic. So does the speed at which aging can happen. Sometimes it's even instantaneous. Fall, break your hip, and add ten years."

RIP Delhi, 1946-2008

2008-03-13T00:44:49+01:00

An elephant died yesterday.

Delhi, an elephant at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, TN, died early yesterday morning in her sleep after a time of decline (you can read about her last days here).

She came to the sanctuary in 2004, having been confiscated by the USDA after she was neglected and harmed by the Hawthorne Corp., which lends elephants to circuses.

An email from the Elephant Sanctuary today said that "while her sisters and caregivers slept, Delhi made her transition. Her passing was silent and peaceful, she passed without waking. We are all spending the day honoring our last precious hours with her; caregivers are still fussing around her, whispering quiet goodbyes. Misty carefully touched all over Delhi's body and then gently stepped over her, sheltering her dearly departed friend."

There will be a memorial page for Delhi at the ES website soon.

Vanity

2008-03-08T14:40:00+01:00

Though empty tomorrows

can hold an uncertain promise

our story had been told

We said our goodbyes

wearing warm feelings and smiles

but inside our hearts had run cold

Against all odds

I never saw you again

except for once

but as tall shadows hid me

I just sat there silently

watching you enjoy a hearty lunch

You looked so good

better than I remembered

in the warm shine of that midday sun

and I didn't want you to see

what had become of me

this slightly let-herself-go mom

Vanity-driven I wanted to look my best

whenever we would meet

and not get caught on a bad hair day

but I sure would've loved to hear your voice

and today I regret I made such an idle choice

For here in your casket you lay

and though my varnish has severely cracked

I sit here picture-perfect

on this old hardwood bench

trying so hard to remember

the rich and lovely timbre

I'll never hear again

Multiple friday

2008-02-22T17:50:00+01:00

In a sense, I think. In many cultures, labyrinths are associated with death. In some beliefs, the labyrinth is thought of as a guide to and through the underworld. Death is naturally scary to any mortal. And I shall stop my rambling before I lose my point completely.

Ageism

2008-01-30T13:05:00+01:00

My Open Wallet, a blog written by a female New Yorker, looks at the recent NYT article ("Nice Résumé. Have You Considered Botox?") about women, aging, and job security. Or is it about job security? Based on the study mentioned in the article and by My Open Wallet, one's age may influence hiring behaviour, particularly for entry level jobs, but we can't deduce anything about how influential looking old is in the hiring process.

More telling, I thought, was this from the original article:

"Many people would shun a book if it were titled 'How Not to Look Jewish' or 'How Not to Look Gay' because to cater to discrimination is to capitulate to it. But the success of 'How Not to Look Old' indicates that popular culture is willing to buy into ageism as an acceptable form of prejudice, even against oneself."

I admit it: I'm aging. So are you. Perhaps My Open Wallet's conclusion, and mine, is simplistic -- 'fear of aging' is code for 'fear of dying,' which can actually happen any time but is more likely to happen the older one is. Fear of aging may also intertwine with 'fear of losing control' -- of reproductive ability, of the ability to attract or keep a partner, of one's bladder, of one's ability to see and hear well, of the car keys and driver's license, of choosing where one lives, of managing one's own money, of one's intellectual capacity, and so on.

It's almost laughable that the book cover jacket apparently says "Looking hip is not just about vanity anymore, it's critical to every woman's personal and financial survival." In fact, the author of the book, More magazine columist Charla Krupp, believes that her book "'is hitting a nerve because I am giving not looking old a spin as if your life depended on it.'" On the contrary, "looking hip" is not going to lead to survival; it won't keep any of us alive.

RIP Oscar Peterson, 15 Aug. 1925 - 23 Dec. 2007

2007-12-26T16:30:00+01:00

I heard on All Things Considered Monday that great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson had died the day before, at age 82. Today Sheila Lennon at Projo offers a short list of links to mp3s, including Peterson playing The Christmas Waltz, and obits. More at NPR here and here, and at Wikipedia.

The Banshee

2007-12-15T16:05:00+01:00

A hollow wind blew wild

the nights she came at our door

bewailing the misfortune

about to fall upon our home

in her mournful lament

As she moves

through the sullen shadows

no opportunity of light

from moon or stars

she casts her cry into the night

grabbing hold of your mind

Leading you

unaware of your fate

through a dense curtain of mist and rain

into the raging sea below

where underneath the drowning water

your destiny awaits

Hushed Morning

2007-11-11T15:15:00+01:00

In peaceful slumbers

your last hours pass gracefully

while morphine drips into your veins

When all hope had flown

you chose to leave this world

unaware of the unbearable pain

We said all we possibly could say

while waiting for you to fall asleep

and in sedate silence now I hold your hand

and listen how you breathe

You barely draw in while the sun rises

and the pauses in between augment

until suddenly your sighs are hushed

just as the morning that took your last breath

RIP Norman Mailer, 31 Jan. 1923 - 10 Nov. 2007

2007-11-10T19:30:00+01:00

Iconic and stridently opinionated American author Norman Mailer died early this morning of kidney failure, about a month after surgery to remove scar tissue around his lungs. He became famous for The Naked And The Dead, published in 1948, a "World War II tale [that] is universally recognized as one of the best war novels to emerge from that conflict." He won Pulitzers in 1968 for an account of the 1967 Vietnam War protest march on the Pentagon, The Armies of the Night, and in 1979 for The Executioner's Song, a novel about self-confessed murderer Gary Gilmore. Mailer published dozens of novels -- his latest, The Castle in the Forest, a fictionalised account of Hitler's childhood told by an underling of Satan's, came out this year -- as well as stories, essays, and newspaper articles, and he co-founded The Village Voice, an alternative newspaper in New York.

USA Today captures much of Mailer's outlook:

"Mailer remained opinionated even as he aged. In his 80s, he fiercely criticized President Bush and the Iraq war, as reflected in his last book, On God, published in October. ... Mailer lambasted Bush as 'one of the Devil's clients. And every time he feels that Jesus is talking to him, count on it, Satan is in his ear.'

"He found much of American culture, from publishing to architecture, 'much less agreeable' than it was when he was young. The country is uglier, he said, decrying how towns and cities look alike and 'measure themselves by the size of their shopping malls.'

"He recalled when 'corporations used to have some pride in their products. Now they have pride in their marketing.. .. Anyone can sell a good product, but to sell a piece of crap, now that takes real talent.'

"The women's movement may have 'opened up life for young women,' but he called it 'a middle-class revolution' that benefits 'corporate angels in their tailored suits.' It was 'welcomed by the corporation that now hires women at every level but the very top and pays them 80% or so of what it pays men.' ...

"He told USA Today that 'every woman, unlike every man -- and this is where I get in trouble with the feminists -- is like a culture unto herself, with all the roots and tendrils that make up a culture.' Being married six times, 'is like living in six different countries, six cultures. So if you've spent eight years in Paris, then moved on, you don't say, "I hate Paris."'

And from the lengthy New York magazine interview:

"For the average person in the average developed country, life, if seen in terms of comfort, is better than it was in the middle of the nineteenth century, but by the measure of our human development as ethical, spiritual, responsible, and creative human beings, it may be worse. Reason, ultimately, looks to strip us of the notion that there is a Creator. The moment you have a society built on reason alone, then individual power begins to substitute for the concept of a Creator.

"Progressivism has yet to prove itself. We live in a more diffuse state of general anxiety than people did in 1900. I don’t want to be a bore about this, but nuclear warfare also came along. The argument: Did we really improve anything spiritually?"

________________________________________________________________________________________

Obituaries and Remembrances:

USA Today, the most interesting of the obits so far
NYT (AP)
BBC
NPR: The Literary Legacy of Norman Mailer
Salon: Remembering Norman Mailer through his books, by AO Scott
2007 interview with Mailer at EW.com
2007 interview with Mailer in New York magazine

(Photo: Johannes Kroemer/Getty Images)

So Many Dead and Dying

2007-10-13T22:37:18+02:00

On Thursday, to my knowledge, a bird and a woman died. The bird, a pet parakeet belonging to a friend, died at 11:03 a.m., after a long life; the woman, a friend of a friend, and an acquaintance of mine, died at 8:04 p.m., after a relatively short life (48 years), one that seems cut terribly short. Both deaths were witnessed by people who love the dying creatures, who were sad they were leaving, who found it hard to watch them die, who cried, who mourn and grieve, who will remember. In the case of the woman's death, other lives will also change, and perhaps major decisions will be made because she is gone, because she was here.

On Thursday, if it was an 'average' day, about 155,000 people died around the world (and about 363,000 people are born). It's hard to comprehend that one or two people die every second. Since I started typing this 10 minutes ago, if this day is average, about 1,000 people who were alive when I started are now dead. Their lives and deaths change other lives.

I can't find any statistics online about global animals deaths per day, but it must be in the billions, counting insects and microbes. Even considering only mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and birds -- pets, animals in the wild, farm animals, circus and zoo animals, animals killed by hunting and human transportation and slaughterhouses -- millions must die every split second.

I'm not railing against death. True, it seems an odd system, but then so is birth. As long as we have birth and a finite planet, death makes some 'sense', I guess, or we'd run out of room even faster than we are.

What I'm thinking about here is just how incessant, constant, and ordinary death is, and how the death of someone we love feels so surprising and extraordinary to us.

Kiss

2007-08-07T13:35:00+02:00

The bell rings

in the middle of the night

I fly to the door

worried

anticipating what might

Two cops

this isn't good

An accident they say

and speed me to the hospital

the siren wailing under the hood

Too late

words forever etched in my mind

They couldn't do a thing

and had to let you go

How can life be so unkind

Pitiless hospital room

you lie there as if in silent sleep

I take your hand

give you a kiss

and weep

Dutch Version:

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Zoen

De bel gaat

in het holst van de nacht

Ik vlieg naar de deur

ongerust

want ik heb op jou gewacht

Twee agenten

ik weet meteen dit is niet goed

Een ongeluk zeggen ze

en brengen me naar het ziekenhuis

met grote spoed

Bereid U maar voor op het ergste

de woorden echoën nog na in mijn hoofd

Je zou vroeg thuis zijn

vanavond

Je had het vanmorgen nog zo beloofd

Te laat

ze konden niets meer voor je doen

In een onverbiddelijke ziekenhuiskamer

ga ik bij je zitten

en geef je een laatste zoen

Problem of Prayer

2007-07-25T21:10:00+02:00

Thoughtful post at Notes of an Anesthesiobist (she's an anesthesiologist and an oboeist) on The Problem of Prayer. She quotes Dr.Sid Schwab:

"There's something perverse to the point of revulsion in the idea of a god that will heal the girl if enough people pray for her. What sort of god is that? ... Does this family's god need reminders; does he have DADD? Or is he waiting for them to hit a magic number of people praying? A certain quantum of prayer-units that must be achieved? Does he give credit for getting close, maybe knock off a little pain when they hit 80%, or is it all or nothing? In praying to him -- and if, as the article says, people around the child see God at work in all his glory -- shouldn't they be thanking him for their daughter's misery rather than asking for a change of plans? Shouldn't they be delighted with the whole thing? If He's perfect, how can you add to that by praying? Or expect a change?"

She goes on to speak about prayer, if it amounts to anything at all, as part of an ongoing relationship with God and as an activity (as C.S. Lewis and many others have said) that is for our own transformation, not God's.

One of the commenters responded that "when someone writes to thank a group of us for praying saying, 'This couldn't have happened without your prayers!' I want to respond, 'Yeah, God really appreciated my powerful help on this one.'"

This is the obvious problem of prayer: if I'm doing something that makes God act in accord with my desires, then I have ultimate power; and if God doesn't act in accordance with my desires, then I am completely helpless and devoid of ultimate power. Either I have the power to make God jump, or I don't; or I get what I want when it's the same thing God wants, which leaves us with the same questions about why God would want a 5-year-old to suffer unimaginable pain and die.

My prayer lately has been a lot of "Please heal my dog, please don't let her suffer, please make her well, please help me to do what she needs." But alongside my rather hopeless pleading is despair and anger that a healthy, perfect, loving, playful, wonderful 5-year old dog should be invaded by an aggressive cancer, should face the prospect of such a short life, should be taken from us so soon after she came into our lives. There is no meaning in that, nothing to make sense of. No one deserves this. No loving God with ultimate power would cause or allow this.

And yet there are a million, a billion, billions of similar situations all over the world right now, lives filled with ravaging disease, tormenting genetic defects, hideous injuries from which there is no recovery, violence, cruelty, neglect, brokenness, heartache ...

And no matter how hard we all pray, we and those for whom we pray will die. Maybe not this time, but the next time. Maybe not the next time, but the one after that. We can't keep decay and disease and danger and pain and heartbreak at bay, because it exists in the nature of creation. It happens, again and again. Just like joy and wonder and pleasure and life happen, again and again.

I believe in some kind of God. Not a God who sits on high and answers prayers. Not a powerful God who spends the endless days and nights taking advice and making decisions about the intricacies of each of our lives (hilarious though that idea can be made to seem!). I believe in someone who, very likely, understands love and power much differently than I do. Someone who grieves, who suffers, who is right there, fully engaged and alive, in the midst of the best and the worst and the most mundane in our lives.

It's not really enough. It's not comforting enough -- in fact, it's hard to understand and accept. It's not a satisfying answer to life's hard questions. It's just a teeny tiny glimpse of the possibility of another way of seeing reality, something vastly different from my usual scale of pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, love and fear.

What To Say When Someone Dies

2007-07-11T02:05:00+02:00

It's sometimes hard to know what to say to someone who is grieving. Susan Palwick at the weblog Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good offers some tips:

First, she links to a list of Top 5 Things NOT To Say At A Funeral and suggestions for what not to say and what to say and do for someone who's grieving from a hospice volunteer.

Then she offers three things she usually says, in her capacity as a hospital chaplain, to someone who's grieving: She tells them that there's no right or normal way to grieve (and that the only wrong way is with violence towards self or others); that no one else can tell them how to grieve or how long it should take; and that grief is hard work and they therefore need to remember to take very good care of themselves.

More resources:

Grieving the Loss of a Pet. Surprise, it's not considered good form to say, "Stop already, it was only a pet."

Prairie Public Broadcasting: How to Help Someone Who's Suffered a Loss. Excellent list of platitudes to avoid, as well as practical and emotional helps.

Selected Suggestions for Dealing with Someone Who's Lost Someone from this is not my beautiful house. Includes: Be prepared for tears at any time; Understand that being in mourning doesn't mean 24/7 misery; It's OK to ask me questions.

Florida Hospital Pastoral Care Grief Support Services' What Can I Say? List of what not to say, what to say, and a dozen or so other suggestions, including Don't Protect the Mourner from the Pain of Grief; Listen; Take the Initiative; Accept Mood Swings.

Pap

2007-07-07T16:40:00+02:00

I held your brittle hand

and wiped your feverish forehead

while you lay looking awfully small

in that daunting hospital bed

Nothing left of the tall strong man

that I called dad

Nothing left to do

but wait for the inevitable end

and so I held your hand

and wiped your forehead

until you were dead

Loss

2007-05-23T10:16:47+02:00

Mark C Chu-Carroll, a doctor of computer science, a Google engineer, and a blogger, lost his father this weekend:

My father died on sunday.To some degree, I'm still in shock. Even though we knew it was coming, when something like this happens, no amount of preparation really helps. He'd been sick with an antibiotic resistant infection since November, and on thursday, refused to let them give him a feeding tube. So we really knew, almost to the day, when he was going to die. And yet, when it finally happened, it was still a shock.We buried him yesterday. I didn't speak at the funeral, because I couldn't. Every time I try to talk about him, my voice just shuts down. But my fingers don't. So if you'll bear with me, I want to say a little bit about my father....He died of an antibiotic resistant infection. As long as I live, I'll never be able to forgive the Doctors who took care of him. The illness that killed him started with an infection in his little toe. Due to a spectacularly stupid series of errors - where basically repeated infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria were not treated properly - he developed antibiotic resistant pneumonia, which is what ended up killing him.He was 80 years old. He was an amazing person. And he will be missed.

My prayers go to Mark and his family.