My little friends… Though missing here is the doe with her 2 bambis and one adopted fawn that I have seen early this September. I see the foursome early morning and they greet me by not running away. They just stare. Just like these guys. They don’t care. They feel safe.
Ah…my little friends… well… I am evaluating what the terms “friendship” and “friends” truly mean. I have had joys and disappointments with friends throughout my life, but it has only been recently, these last couple of years or so, when I have seriously pondered about what being a friend is all about.
And, like I have always said to my kids, ad nauseum, there’s nothing new under the sun and all clichés and stereotypes have a basis in truth. So, fairweather friends? Yes, I’ve known them all.
However, for the first time in my life I am faced with a conundrum: “friends” who chose betrayal rather than truth. And the perennial question is: Why? Why lie? Why betray? I will never know the truth. My biggest shock: “friends” I have known for half a century have been weak, feeble and ugly. “Acquaintances” of recent years have been solid, stolid and strong. Go figure! Another lesson to write about to my grandkids.
For some reason, my little friends remind me of guanacos!
Many a time I reflect on the true meaning of a cultural divide. It is so much more than one loving cilantro and spicy foods, the other loving bland and simple concoctions. Or preferring novels to autobiographies. Or fancying opera to rock and roll.
We dismiss that cultural divide to our peril. Sometimes, it can easily be bridged. But other times, we don’t realize that, while the crack to cross appears narrow, when you get close to it you discover it is an abyss, wider and deeper than expected.
Take the Argentine tango. Al Pacino in A Scent of a Woman, Arnold Scharzenegger in True Lies, for example. The truth is that the famous Argentine singer of yore, Carlos Gardel, composed this song, which actually refers to a gambler losing a horse’s race “por una cabeza”(by just a head).
Today, some would say the Hollywood movies engaged in “cultural appropriation” and some would be crying crocodile tears. The truth is that beautiful music transcends cultures and is universal. However, while we all can appreciate the rhythm, the exotic movements, the bandoneon, we might have a harder time fully understanding the meaning behind the lyrics.
Which leads me to another rumination of mine. Many times I find that certain melodies, lyrics, stories and poems that I used to love or made me ponder then, were somewhat pointing me to “something” that only now, at this stage in my life, I can finally begin to understand.
Were they part of what I call the tender tendrils of the cobweb of life that we don’t see until the sun hits the morning dew on that cobweb and then, BINGO, it appears in all its majesty? I’ve encountered this phenomenon countless times, ergo my conclusion that we, life, experiences are all linked in some way through those almost unseen tendrils until that light gives me that “Eureka” moment.
The song, raw and brutal, is the realization that a betrayal brought forth depredation. That devastation does not end in a “Hah, revenge is best served cold” moment. It only highlights the horrors of Dorian Gray.
The tango crooner (Carlos Gardel) cannot handle the awareness that he is now without friends, having lived a wrong and wicked moment, without honor. And the object of his downfall is devastatingly pitiful.
Whether man or woman, I think we can understand the angst. At the end of it all, I guess, when we sow with meanness and lies we reap bitterness, sadness and sorrow, and when reality hits it is but the awareness that its genesis is the grotesque and rotten fruit of an obsessive and wrongful yearning.
Unfortunately, no English translation captures the essence of the words. You have to understand the language, the slang, the setting, the idiosyncrasies. However, I merged a couple of translations below, to try and convey the tango’s ferocious punch to the solar plexus.
And, for the life of me, I know for a fact that I would not like to be remembered as a featherless rooster!
Alone, faded, worn out, I saw her this dawn Leaving a cabaret,
A full yard long of neck and A hanger of a neckline under the chin. Bow-legged, dressed like a young broad, Dyed and flirting her nudity.
Seemed like a featherless rooster Mockingly showing off her pecked hide.
I, that know when I can't take it anymore, Just ran away from there seeing her like that, Trying not to cry.
And to think that ten years ago she was my madness That I went as far as betrayal for her beauty. That what is now a wreck Was my sweetheart, where I lost my dignity.
That nuts for her beauty, I stole my mother's bread I became mean and sinful. That I was left without a friend, That I lived in bad faith.
That she had me on my knees Without morals, like a beggar when she left. I never thought I would see her in a requiescat in pace As cruel as today.
Look, if it's not to commit suicide, that for that old junk I was left as what I am now. Fierce revenge that of time That makes you see destroyed what you loved.
This encounter has hurt me so much That if I think about it more, I end up poisoned, Tonight I get drunk well, Thoroughly drunk, So I wont think..
So, after the moon walked the night in her silvery shoon, I caught her last sliver of shine on a gloriously crisp Maine sunrise. I tried to capture the beauty, but the phone did not fulfill its promise. Pretty, yes, but not glorious as I witnessed it. I thought as I stared, how can one be sad peering at such majestic color and scene? And so early in the morning? I am in good company, staring at the moon, with ghost crabs and singing frogs.
Working on a concept paper to help a friend, I had been thinking about what constitutes a “drag” in the business world, as you want to speed things up in order to accomplish as much as you can in the shortest time available. Sometimes you need to do the right thing and get rid of excess baggage, so to speak, whether it is product or humans. As to the latter, it can be quite devastating to contemplate the process. I’ve had my share of having to tell employees that their end date had arrived, and, when the individual was decent and hard working, it was horrible to let go. That’s one of the reasons I opted not to pursue management. As a lawyer, I liked the solitude of research and writing and not the upheaval of directing hiring and firing. It is so very true in one’s personal life as well.
Upon reflection, yesterday morning, I realized that not only am I entering the “death cleanup” stage in my life, trying to sever the balls and chains that tie me to “things” – in itself a huge “drag”- but I am discarding “dead wood” and all that constitutes what I finally see as useless or dangerous detritus. Sometimes, it takes an ugly trauma to accelerate this process. Other times, it just happens.
At the end of the day, I don’t need nor want dead wood, be it memories or people that draw me down to complacency or ennui or despair. More importantly, it is the awareness that some of my dead wood are the so-called “friends” I thought I had, that either were Judas goats and very treacherous, or complete idiots that I put up with because of circumstances of life. I don’t need dead wood, rotten apples belong in composts, and weak idiots are just a drag. It has taken me a long time to finally reach this conclusion, and it is liberating. My only regret is not having figured this out sooner. But then, wisdom sometimes is slow to arrive. Yet, it’s better late than never.
It’s amazing how the above musings are all thanks to staring at the silvery light of the sliver of moon as I savored a serene sunrise and thought of Walter de la Mare!
Silver
Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon; This way, and that, she peers, and sees Silver fruit upon silver trees; One by one the casements catch Her beams beneath the silvery thatch; Couched in his kennel, like a log, With paws of silver sleeps the dog; From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep; A harvest mouse goes scampering by, With silver claws and a silver eye; And moveless fish in the water gleam, By silver reeds in a silver stream.
I just found a sermon a Presbyterian pastor once shared with me, because it made such an impact on me after the many deaths I had witnessed. It was his love song about the famous Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd.
Beholding a most beautiful sunrise over calm waters this morning, the serendipitous encounter with the sermon I received in March 2019 made me reflect on a myriad of things. I share one paragraph of a series of many that the Reverend encapsulated as the essence of life:
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”…
So what about the mess I have made of my life from time to time? What about the loved ones I disappointed, the people I deceived, the compromises I made with my conscience, the scars I left on those I harmed? No one likes to be followed, but in this case I take comfort in the possibility that goodness and mercy might not get too far out ahead of me, but might follow me, picking up the broken pieces of my past and putting them back together again. The assurance here is that goodness, which is the benefit of forgiveness; and mercy, which is the basis of every new chance at life, will follow me all the days of my life.
I remember so well the day I discovered these flowers. The promise of eternal summer blossoms (although they closed up after the sun went down or on cloudy days). They never disappointed.
They are called Gazania Rigens, but I like that they are referred to as the treasure flowers. They are native to South Africa, and named after a Greek philosopher, Theodorus of Gaza, who translated Aristotle and others into Latin during the Renaissance.
Summer has ended here in Maine, and with it all the expectations that I was anticipating in spring and which did not materialize for me, like the annual visits of family and friends. Like this flower, that closes up at sundown and in cloudy days, summer closed and then wilted away. The first frost has appeared, and more than ever, I am focused on what lies ahead.
Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough
And savage that thinking of it now, I feel The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.
I am at the sunset of my life, not midway. However, at different stages in my peripatetic life I have been lost and have gone through quite a few dark woods to find the road, so to speak.
Many summers, while the gazinias were at their peak, my life’s journey brought me down to what I perceived to be rock bottom. Crises of family, health, friends, work. In retrospect, these crises were existential in nature and I flowed with the river of life, and eventually always reached a shore. Despite my insecurities and doubts, I retained a buoy of sorts, and never quite felt I was totally adrift.
Nowadays, I am on a quest to seek “clarity of vision, clarity of understanding, clarity of purpose”. So I am trying to read and understand Dante Alighieri, no small feat. I am approaching this adventure by doing research about the man and the epoch before immersing myself into the walk down to hell and back.
For example, why is Dante’s Inferno’s last circle the place reserved for the worst of sinners, who are tortured because of the worst of sins: treachery? Why do the nine circles spiral down, constricting themselves to a narrower and icier place? Isn’t our image of hell a raging fire?
There is a reason why, despite meting out punishment for heinous crimes, even the law recognizes that some of those such crimes and ensuing punishments can be mitigated when the crimes are committed in the heat of passion. There is no premeditation.
Yet, fraudulence and treachery are done deliberately, in cold blood. They are sought out in an icy calculating way: they are a choice usually justified by chewing on past resentments, anger, hatred. At the end of the day, it seems to me, that the evil transgressions we humans engage in, all involve pure and unadeltarted selfishness, thinking only of our own personal pleasures, and not of caring for others. It is the essence of what St. Augustine referred to as homo incurvatus in se, a Latin phrase that means “”humanity curved in on itself”, curving ourselves into our own little and insignificant mini-kingdoms.
I always felt uprooted, and that it was hard to belong somewhere, because of my itinerant life. But, my initial first excursions into researching the Inferno led to my AHA moment: finally understanding the true meaning of deracination. The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition states that to deracinate is “to make someone or something lose their connection to any particular place, background, way of life, etc.”
There is a difference between the meanderings of life as they take one on different voyages, and the calculating, callous and cruel dissevering of one’s tethered anchor or the tearing asunder of one’s soul, of all that was, is, and will be. The mind and heart cannot quite understand what is happening as it is happening. The closest description I can think of is the horror of becoming a prey to hyenas that do not kill their prey but, rather, tear them apart and eat them while they are alive. It is a most gruesome fate. Fittingly, the betrayers in Dante’s Ninth Circle are eternally chewed by Satan!
In the end, the only way up is down and an antidote to our transgressions is a good dose of humility. Humility has many synonyms; its etymology brings us to humus – the earth. The word human derives from humus as well. In Hebrew Adam is “man” and Adamah is “from the earth”. So much to learn, so little time left! I better start reading Dante sooner than later…
Seven years ago exactly yesterday I posted this beautiful lion noting: “HA HA HA HA! said the lion… He knows something I do not. There is a story to be told.Beauty of the beast.”
So now I am trying to write another little fable with a moral for my grandchildren, because hindsight is 20/20. I have discovered that, no matter how old you are and alert, you can be duped and tricked and be totally in la-la land.
Sometimes, the discovery of the lies or deception has been quite comical. Other times, it has been an earth-shattering disappointment. Most of the times, you feel like a fool, and that is quite a painful realization. Who wants to hear “You are a fool, not because I fooled you, but because you are personally a fool”? But it’s true. For a fleeting moment you believe you are a fool.
It is quite sad when you discover those you admired and thought had integrity turned out to have feet of clay, I believe the worst thing that can happen involving business colleagues, or friends, or family is the crumbling of trust.
Once broken, trust can never be regained. There is no going back. You can forgive, but you can never forget. And that is the saddest part of all.
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!
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.
Dum Spiro Spero 