Tag: life

You Are a Fool, not because I Fooled You, but because You are Personally a Fool

October 6, 2024

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.

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 Nightmare of the Scream

September 5, 2024

Earlier this year, I considered May the “Nightmare of The Scream” for I witnessed an old woman’s look of horror with her mouth agape. Go figure. Probably because I have always loved art and I have had a fondness for Edvard Munch’s The Scream, that open mouth reminded me of the painting. I especially have Munch’s caricature of horror seared in my memory because I was so impressionably young when I first studied it in High School and have been trying to write a story based on that lightbulb-shaped head.

Fast forward to this past July, and I am walking the pristine beaches of the Hamptons in New York. So many shells. So many frolicking dolphins. So many dancing terns and sandpipers. So many memories of youth and beautiful summer days with young children, fun siblings, new potential “in-laws”, old parents.

And then? I am spooked beyond belief: a young dead shark, staring like a dessicated and dumbfounded ancient creature frozen in shock…

There is beauty in that petrified “rigor mortis”, but the little shark reminded me of that stupefied old woman, who belonged in the annals of history or an old and yellowed yearbook.

And yet, I couldn’t stop laughing. Hey, I was expecting to see some perfect teeth in the making! It was a baby shark, after all!

The dead toothless shark also reminded me of a little old man who once upon a long time ago grabbed my wrist on a subway in Tokyo with his toothless gums and planted a soft gumless kiss. At the time I stared at my High School friend horrified. And then we laughed! How weirdly odd and sweet was that!

The little old man was tiny and bald and looked up at me and smiled a toothless grin. I hadn’t thought of that memory until I saw The Nightmare of The Scream.