Imaginary Fears and the “Chantapufi”.

October 6, 2024

This year alone will end for me, yet again, with many, many experiences with worthless but dangerous “chantapufis”.   I periodically revisit an old journal entry, because I keep encountering these unsavory human beings all the time! So, here it goes:

Chantapufis are totally worthless because their only contribution to society is bullying.  But they are dangerous because, when cloaked under the mantle of authority, they can turn regular decent individuals into cowards and servile vassals.  

The latest example of a chantapufi that I have experienced is an obnoxious type, someone who wields power because of his/her position, who issues “orders” like a master to his dog:  “Come”… And who resents what he/she perceives to be an underling who ought not to have better access to information and/or powerful individuals than he/she.  Yet, as always, when the chantapufi is revealed, he/she crawls back into the shell of isolation, like one of those crabs that move into another crab’s shell.  

I ought to feel benign at this juncture, because I like to think I am a better person.  But, right now, I want to squish the chantapufi like the cockroach that he/she is.  Not very noble nor charitable. Shame on me.

Sometimes we are our own worst enemies, especially when doubt in one’s principles and abilities creeps in. Everyone is prone to tsk-tsk clichés and proverbs and fables alike (though not many seem to have heard of Aesop or La Fontaine nowadays), because they sometimes invoke stereotypes.  But, stereotypes are not necessarily all evil and sometimes they do help identify a certain character or characteristic, based on the cumulative knowledge that we amass through the centuries of experience.

One particular such stereotype is what the Argentines refer to as a “chantapufi”, a slang term that means someone who has no qualms lying or deceiving in order to gain something.  More specifically, it is a person whose word has no value because he or she has no honor.

There are many “chantapufis” in this world, and I have come across them quite often, though -in some cases- it took me a long time to figure some of them as such.  The problem is that these “chantapufis” are hard to decipher initially, because they are master liars and obfuscators. They are very dangerous when they come cloaked in the veneer of reputable professions and organizations.

But “chantapufis” will forever be “chantapufis” so, when we are afraid of our imaginary fears, it makes sense to figure out who or what is originating that fear.  If it comes from a “chantapufi”, chances are we are hearing from a charlatan, like the fox in the Aesop’s fable….

The Fox without a Tail, by Aesop

A fox lost his tail in escaping from a steel trap. When he began to go about again, he found that every one looked down upon or laughed at him. Not liking this, he thought to himself that if he could persuade the other foxes to cut off their tails, his own loss would not be so noticeable.

Accordingly he called together the foxes and said: “How is it that you still wear your tails? Of what use are they? They are in the way, they often get caught in traps, they are heavy to carry and not pretty to look upon. Believe me, we are far better without them. Cut off your tails, my friends, and you will see how much more comfortable it is. I for my part have never enjoyed myself so much nor found life so pleasant as I have since I lost mine.”

Upon this, a sly old fox, seeing through the trick, cried, “It seems to me, my friend, that you would not be so anxious for us to cut off our tails, if you had not already lost yours.”

(Journal entry May 5, 2013)

To Everything there is a Reason

October 5, 2024

“Today, August 31, 2021, I found this sunrise. I call it “Death and Dying by the Sword”, because I feel that I have been singled out. The message is quite clear, right?”

This summer, 3 years later, I came across my old entry above. It jolted me! And then, it made me reflect, because, in hindsight, I realize my mood hinted to a foreboding of sorts. Nowadays, it is clear the perspicacity of what was my intuition but I could not name nor label the imponderable then.

And that is life, right? We are so impatient and impetuous to try to get answers right then and there. Sometimes we do. But other times, it takes months or years to reach an understanding of sorts.

Today, I would rename it “Hope’s Crepuscular Radiance”. Time to go read Sir Walter Scott again!

Of Foofaraws

October 5, 2024
May be an image of boat and body of water

“Partirà, la nave partirà…”

Oh what memories of youthful expectations of travel to unknown destinies, pondering where we would all end up, these few words of a chorus of a famous 1970 San Remo Festival song conjured in the Dillon siblings’ minds…

To this day, the mere singing of these few Italian words makes my siblings’ and mine eyes sparkle with mirth and we break out in peals of laughter. Go figure.

This summer, we ended up singing the song more than a few times, laughing at the thought that the boat had finally hit more than a few rocks, but what a trip it had endured.

There is something cathartic about indulging in foofaraws. And I still find Sergio Endrigo, the Italian crooner, transports me to happy times.

The Sailboats, The Bagaduce and The Cross

October 4, 2024

I have always found solace in the peaceful beauty of a wonderful landmark in my neck of the woods, the little Catholic Chapel called Our Lady of Holy Hope in Castine. It is unpretentious but commands a most spectacular view. Someone once made a disparaging comment that it was an afterthought built for the “help” of the more affluent citizens of the town. Maybe. But I have my doubts.

The little Church sits where Fort Pentagoet was, and an old plaque inscribed in Latin showed that the French had built it. “A University of Maine archaeological team recently established that a Catholic chapel was originally built by the French in 1635 on the site of the present Our Lady of Holy Hope chapel in Castine. From all indications this mission was one of the first in Maine and in the United States.”

I have gone to this place many a time to think, meditate, ponder about the joys and vicissitudes of life, feel closer to my parents and other dead relatives, and reflect on the role that the French Catholic priests of the day played in establishing relationships with the indigenous population.

In fact, it was a Jesuit priest, Father Sebastien Râle, who spent most of his life among the Abenaki, who produced an Abenaki-French dictionary that is recognized as an opus because it helped preserve the language.

I perused that dictionary and it is why I came up with the name “K’chi Casco” for our little farm (meaning Great Heron).

Earlier on a breezy summer day, wondering when or if children and grandchildren might visit, fishing and hiking trips might end, thinking about the University of Maine end-of-summer picnic we were hosting, anticipating an upcoming trip to Europe to reunite with friends (and how I hate to fly, which is a real curse for me), I came across the two sailing ships. Lo and behold, thank God for the phone. I caught them competing with each other and then the Cross providing a magnificent frame…(I think so!).

And now, uploading these photos, I remembered an ancient song based on Charles Kingsley‘s poem, that I had learnt as a kid, thanks to my formidable Great-Aunts, who were steeped in old English literature and lore. I used to sing it with them, and it was the saddest of tunes and lyrics.

However, one day, when I was 10 or so, I heard a young Joan Baez singing it mournfully like a loon, the way I thought ought to be sung. I still do.

I sometimes wonder if I am the only one who takes these labyrinthine journeys through the memories in my heart and mind.

The Three Fishers
by Charles Kingsley

Three fishers went sailing away to the West,
Away to the West as the sun went down;
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come home to the town;
For men must work and women must weep,
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep;
And goodbye to the bar and its moaning.

(Journaled about it on September 8, 2024)

Maine Deer

October 3, 2024
May be an image of deer

I guess deer hunting season here in Maine started September 7. I have been seeing people (men, primarily) wearing the ubiquitous orange hats and orange vests, a sign that hunting season has begun.

I am a meat eater and particular in terms of the types of cuts and the quality of the meat. While I don’t like to think how that delicious steak came to come onto my dinner plate, I am also not averse to the idea of eating an animal because of the slaughter involved. Harsh, I know. But I grew up in the land of the best “asados”.

I don’t really care for venison, except for the “filet mignon-style cut”. My Mother-in-Law liked to prepare a venison chili, but, as much as I tried, I did not like it, even though I enjoy chili (I drew the line, though, in South Africa, where I was offered crocodile meat chili and elephant meat chili.).

However, a wonderful gentleman hunter (he turned a dilapidated garden shed into my little office) once brought me moose. I was trepidatious. But I felt obliged to at least give it a try. He told me how it ought to be prepared. And, to my delight, I found that it tastes like the most tender fat-free mignon. I can eat it any time.

Today, as I was leaving a friend’s home to go back home, I noticed the same mamma I have seen with 2 Bambis these last few weeks. (I am assuming it is the mamma, because the fawns stick to her like glue). She is not afraid of humans, because there is no hunter on the property and no hunting is allowed. She lifted her head to stare at me in a quite lackadaisical manner, while her Bambis frolicked nearby (too far for me to take a photo).

And I thought: I hope she keeps on grazing in this hunt-free zone. She is too pretty. Maybe she is protected (there are rules after all). I don’t know. But I like the way she carries herself and I don’t want her gone.

Now, based on my personal experience, where I subscribe to the philosophy that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, she may very well prance across the busy street nearby and be hit by a car. Kind of like a Seinfeld episode.

But, but…I sincerely hope she has many more seasons to produce more Bambis.

Autumn in Maine Can Bring a Flash of Great Joy.

October 3, 2024

Today I reunited with old friends here in Maine, something that gave me a flash of great joy. Driving home, looking at the myriad of red, orange and yellow leaves, I reflected on why I felt so happy.

Autumn is a special time here, not only because of the beauty of the landscape, but because it is the beginning of “nesting” time, or rather, the anticipation of what is to come after the leaf peepers leave:  the start of what I call the Andrew Wyathesque period of the area:  the grasses will turn yellow and there will soon be a calming down, that may bring sadness or contentment.  It depends.

The weather has an underlying chill.  My good friend, the horse, can’t wait for the first frost that will finally put an end to the pesky flies that pullulate around him.  I am not ready for that first frost, but am resigned to it.  

I have my winter clothes and am prepared.  I hope I will opt for contentment and not sadness.  One of the things I feared most about moving to Maine full time was the sadness I would feel, not because of the cold, but because of the short dark days.

I discovered that weather played a pivotal role in my life when I first lived in Moscow, gazillion years ago, in the late 1980’s.  It wasn’t until I visited Rome, on a beautiful sojourn early one spring to escape the darkness of the USSR, that I realized how the Moscow weather (and lack of sunlight) affected my soul.  In those days, only a rare few had identified this condition as “SAD”:  seasonal affective disorder.  

In the end, it was thanks to my SAD condition that I finally understood why there was only a Tchaikovsky, or a Dostoevsky, or any one of those profound Russian musicians, artists and writers.  I realized that weather and lack of light can affect your outlook on life, especially if you are missing something or are experiencing a longing of sorts.  There is an emotional dislocation. 

I resorted to music and my children, who were very young then, can attest to that.  I bombarded them with songs.  To this day, they tell me, they remember most of the music scores I played in the car, wherever we went, and they have a soft spot in their hearts for them.

Funny how old age can change things around.  I know I will be sad and melancholic when we lose the leaves and the grasses turn yellow.  However, I am anticipating spending cold days ahead with warm and kind friends and acquaintances who understand that we all go through that misplacement of emotions that comes from living life.

I leave you to listen to one of my favorite ballads that captures my heart, my love for my home, and best explains my sentiments nowadays.

Terezin: The Paradise Ghetto

October 3, 2024

PROLOGUE: Because I thrive on music and philosophy and an insatiable curiosity (my own Balm of Gilead), and am trying to make sense of the river of life, I discovered a little slice of what I wrote in my now defunct blog on July 19, 2010, which I thought I would share. Am re-constructing my blog, which used to be a repository of things that maybe some of my friends and family and colleagues would have found of interest. So, here it goes, with a couple of updates:

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What a lovely way to perpetuate the legacy of a young musician and composer, Gideon Klein, whose life was destroyed in the German concentration camps of World War II. Thrice he wrote in a letter smuggled out of Auschwitz, “Don’t Forget About Me.” How many of us have had this thought?

Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, is where all the Jews from the Terezin Ghetto were sent. Terezin is also known for the devastating loss of children… Among the many who perished in Auschwitz and other extermination camps after having “transited” in Terezin was Peter Ginz, an 11-year old boy, who drew his vision of travel in space in the early 1940’s. Ironically, his drawing survived him; it eventually ended up in the national museum in Israel.

It was a replica of this particular drawing that Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the Columbia shuttle accident, took with him on his fateful journey. More than 50 years after this boy’s life was snuffed, this replica was destroyed in an overwhelmingly dramatic accident, a terribly sad tribute to the boy’s violent death! Amazingly, the shuttle flight happened on February 1, 2003: Peter Ginz would have celebrated his 75th birthday.

If you like to go down rabbit holes like I do, here is a great read on Gideon Klein.

Below is a short video from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that attests that despite his short life, Gideon Klein was never forgotten. Watch this special short story – it is so poignant:.

“Terezin’s Musical Legacy: A recent Prague Spring concert honored musicians and artists in the Terezin concentration camp who died in the Holocaust. Terezin Music Foundation founder Mark Ludwig pays special homage to composer Gideon Klein, who died aged 26.”

Of Judas Goats

October 3, 2024
May be an image of grass

One of the salient bilingual refrains I recall hearing growing up was how it takes one bad apple to spoil the bushel or “una manzana podrida pudre a las demás”. I hated the connotation because it was always used in reference to that “one friend” who could lead everyone astray, and you just had to get rid of that “friend”.

At the time, I resented my teachers, grandparents, parents, priests, nuns all pointing out to the importance of dumping that “rotten apple”, because sometimes fingers were pointed towards someone I knew and liked. And, of course, I knew better!

Lately, though, I have been engaging in retrospection trying to understand why some people whom one considers friends – who one might have spent time sharing a meal, a warm home, indulging in “old stories” and caring about “old woes”, the ails and ailments and deaths of other friends and children – can perversely aid and abet lies and treacherous behavior, and actually eagerly encourage the ruination of entire families of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc., just because. There seems to be a sadistic pleasure in this indulgence…and no compassion for any one of the victims.

Of course, this treachery is as old as the Bible and literature is chock full of these unsavory characters. So, as I am indulging in research for a narrative about this despicable behavior, lo and behold, I discovered a new thing: the “Judas goat”! I had never heard of it.

A Judas goat is raised with the sheep so that it will eventually gain their trust and when the time comes the Judas goat will lead the sheep to the slaughterhouse itself.

So now I need to study this phenomenon more, because I realize that “friends” who act in such a dishonest way, are truly Judas goats who operate because of their dark and rotten ulterior motives, whether they dislike the person/persons they are betraying, or whether they have misbehaved and need to cover their own tracks…that is, tit-for-tat.

However, the irony of ironies is that the Judas goat’s service is finite, and eventually it exhausts its usefulness. And then? Ah, their own masters end up sending them off to their miserable end.

I feel sorry for the Judas goat. After all, it is just a goat that has been trained to fulfill an animal husbandry purpose. However, the human Judas goat, well…now that is another story!

(A journal entry – September 10, 2024).

Unmoorings

September 30, 2024

This old photo that I had taken long ago, of a dilapidated boat with a beautiful sea lion by its side, made me think about death, loss and hope.  Go figure!  

In my own experience with loss, I recognize how important it is for those who remain behind to share in the suffering of the stricken one. The dénouement that sometimes is slow in coming, and which eventually affects us all, can help us prepare for the inevitability of death, of shuffling off our mortal coils, and put things in perspective: that is, truly understand what is significant and what is not. This is something that I, for certain, have failed to distinguish repeatedly.

The sufferer may not realize it, in the midst of his pain and suffering, but the impact of his predicament has a ripple effect on those who love him, and, for the most part, makes the witness a better person for it.

In my experience, faith does play an integral part in all of this. Nihilism brings only despair.  The back pages of my memory of heady college days discussing Nietsche’s nihilism, and other philosophers’ perspectives on death and dying, confirm this to me.

My own reaction to reading others’ descriptions of coming to grip with their mortality validates to me that, as the antidote to nihilism, John Donne aptly meditated:  “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…”

However, I have discovered that death does not just involve a human body that withers away.  Death can come in a myriad of ways. 

Sometimes we are dealt blows that seem insurmountable:  a major disease, estranged relationships, abuse, betrayals, financial woes and other traumatic events, and our lives are unmoored, like a boat being tossed aimlessly in a sea of trouble.

But, every now and then, the boat does not crack open and sink.  Miraculously, sometimes it finds a place of shelter, and maybe, maybe it can even be salvaged.  The thread of life that is unwound by the Fates may not necessarily end up severed…frayed, maybe, but not severed, and life goes on.

Ah, but I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now


The blessings that come from working with good young people…

September 29, 2024

Nine years ago I jotted down these thoughts: Today I realized how blessed I am to work with smart, honest and caring young individuals.  They made me laugh, they shared their concerns, they tried to rope me in because I was miffed about a silly ‘chantapufi’.   I realize it is an amazing privilege to share the ups and downs of life with my colleagues.  More than anything, I am very grateful, because these colleagues make my life meaningful.

One of my big regrets in life is that I did not take seriously the little talent I had playing classical guitar.  I was not a prodigy, but I was not bad when I was a youngster.  I did practice but not enough.  My fingers now are rather stiff compared to decades ago, but when I practice long, they regain their youthful spring.  Today, spending what I consider wonderful time conversing with my younger colleagues, made me think of a time when I was their age and ought to have continued with my classical guitar but I did not.   There is a beautiful Tárrega piece, Capricho Árabe (Arab caprice), which has to be one of the most exquisite instrumental pieces ever composed.

I plan on spending time re-learning how to play it.  The lesson I hope to impart to my children and young colleagues -should they ask- is that you are never, ever old to go back and relearn something…  You are never too old to try to capture true beauty.  Compassion, empathy, appreciation for the exquisite and perfect, love of beauty, may be appreciated by the young -if they are lucky-, but these are gifts that eventually, at the sunset of one’s life, one pays closer attention because we finally understand that there are few universal truths – like this rendition of Capricho Árabe, which makes me cry every time I listen to it: