It's hard to say

It's hard to say which influences are the greatest in our lives.  Influences sometimes build on each other.  So, the second influence couldn't happen unless and until the first influence is felt.  Sometimes influences establish stability in our lives, and at other times the influences seem to take us to a new level.  However, it is the stability that was important before we were prepared to pass to a new level.

Sometimes influences compete with each other.  While one influence may eventually subdue or  displace the other, the influence that  wins becomes clearer and more entrenched in our behavior.  And while the one that loses is replaced, it had to be considered in the first place, so it affected our behavior in part during its consideration period.

A man born in England in 1942 is a good example.  He was born into a family in which the mother and father were both supremely educated.  Thus, they put an emphasis on education.  But, the young man didn't do well in school, later commenting that he nearly didn't learn how to read.  The family moved, so fortunately, the young man learned to read at a different school.  His father was an eccentric, medical researcher and traveled often to Africa, so he shared some characteristics with the fabled "absentee father."  One biographer says that at the dinner table (especially when the father was at home) each person at the table had a book to read, making the meals a really quiet time of day.

Backgrounds make us what we are, right?  Well... when the young man went to college he was a social misfit, but soon learned how to correct that.  And, for many, at this point in life there is that magical moment that supersedes any shape background has given us.  It is that meeting with the one who tickles our senses and wins our heart.  The young man listened to his sister and met the one who would "give him a reason to live" (his own words).

Debilitating illness can be a major influence for sure and set aside any influence that has affected our lives to that point.  Such was the case for our young man.  Debilitation can end an academic career, end a marriage, and end any immediate family connections. It is hard to overcome and is all-pervasive.  Initially, all three possibilities seemed to have its way with this man, but other influences helped him overcome what usually happens.

Because the young man grew up to have so much notoriety, one naturally who the greatest influence in this man's life was?  His father, who provided stability even though he was absent?  His mother, who had studied politics, economics, and philosophy?  His sister who earned enough respect from him that he listened to her when she recommended a woman he might like?  His wife, who stuck by him even after he developed a crippling medical condition.  His parents as a team, who provided a better than average base for him to grow up in?  His teachers at all the levels of his education, who recognized that this quirky, aggravating young man actually had much to offer.  A committee of professors who denied him the track to Cambridge that sprung his career because he failed an exit test.  He had to convince them in a subsequent oral exam that he was worthy of being in an honors program before he was allowed to continue.

It could be none of the above.  It could have been a thought developed from seeing something happen or a book that he read to help him develop a radical theory.  It could have been the treatment of students at his high school or his first year at college.  Maybe it was the snub by the mentor that he had wanted to study under.  Maybe it was his doctor's attitude when the doctor told him that he would die in two years from the time of the diagnosis of his disease.

Who knows?!  But, Stephen Hawking had something to influence him, or many things, that would propel him to the forefront of the physics cosmos and make him the most imminent scientist in the modern world.  I'm glad for him and for us who live in the world of a better understanding because of him.

But, we nearly didn't have him.  He nearly couldn't read during his early school years.  He nearly didn't make it to Cambridge to follow his dreams with world renowned faculty.  He nearly gave up on his education after learning of his disease.  He nearly lost all hope before he submitted his dissertation finding a theory everything that exists... Nearly... but something influenced him... It's just hard to know what exactly... Maybe everything!

Life's snarls

I had a great visual reminder today of how life is sometimes.  I was driving to my destination that under normal circumstances would have taken 55 minutes to an hour to drive.  Given the time of day, it would probably take a little longer, maybe an hour and 15 minutes.  Well, that didn't account for lane closures.  Lane closures on two different freeways backed up traffic so badly that it affected the road I was on as well.  Add 30 more minutes to the schedule for stop and go traffic for about a 10 mile stretch.  It doubled the time of the normal drive.

And that's really how it happens, right?  You can't really tell when you're about to come up on a stretch that will slow you down - not just a little bit, but a whole lot.  It gets your attention,  It makes you a little angry.  It gives time to think about a lot of things, one of which is jumping off the freeway and taking an alternate route.  That nearly always costs me more time than the slow pace driving on the freeway.

When you make it out of the snarl, you sure feel like whooping and hollering.  Yes, that is the way life is.

It will be all right

I had a chance to talk to a 14 year-old Chinese youth.  He was very friendly and talked freely of his experiences in the U.S. and China.  He was under no illusion as to life in China having what most would consider "less freedom" than the United States.  He accepted the Chinese way of life, of course.  It was his frame of reference for living.  He had only been in the U.S. for four months, so his knowledge was limited of how things work politically here.  But, he did know how things worked socially for 9th graders in a rich, private school.

I was encouraged by what he spoke of - his dreams for his future, his immediate life, his family.  It's the same as what any ninth grader would speak of.  He didn't really have any axes to grind.  He wasn't bitter about being a fish out of water for a while in his life.  He seemed really comfortable in his own skin.  He was confident, content, determined, and affable.

I don't really want to live life over just to see if I would do anything different from the way it happened.  But, talks with young people, especially from other countries, allow me to imagine what the future will hold.  People are just people, so in some ways the future will be the same as the present.  But, it seems that there will be a more concerted effort for working hard to make life better.  These young people aren't satisfied with the imperfections they see around them.  They want something better.  They want a safe world, a good world (as opposed to an evil one).  They want to excel, they want to take the world farther.  They certainly have my vote.  I'll be gone when they are running things.  But, I sleep easier at night.  My children and their children are headed for a grand future.

Blue hair evening

I walked up to order my tacos from the waiting cashier.  It was not a chain restaurant but a place my daughter wanted me to visit with her.  My daughter turned to me and asked me if I wanted tacos. "They're bison tacos.  I'm getting two.  Do you want two?"

"Sure," I replied.

The cashier punched in the order.  She had long, blue hair.  Six rhinestone studs dotted the middle of her face - one on each nostril, one below each nostril, one above each corner of her mouth.  She was very competent, and we were finished ordering in no time.

After the meal, we walked to a store called Hey Sugar.  Now that was a really different experience.  They had 20 different kinds of popcorn, from the regular, buttered popcorn to cashew caramel, cotton candy, and cilantra chile popcorn.  They had about the same number of odd combinations of flavors of jelly beans as well.  And the chocolate counter had some normal and abnormal combinations too.  I ended up buying some malt balls that were called bacon, toffee malt balls.  M-m-m-m, delicious.  I left after ordering (and drinking) a cafe latte milkshake.  Delicious too.

What a different kind of night, thanks to my daughter.  Looks and eats out on the fringe.  I like those kinds of evenings.  They help me know where the center of living is, but they also help me enjoy the edge even if I don't live on it.  Bison, blue hair, and bacon malt balls.  What a way to stretch my horizons!  I'm  better for having done it.

Life fluency

One helpful exercise on the journey to fluency in another language is to record one's own voice while reading aloud.  This exercise allows a person to pronounce words more crisply and to acquire the underlying tones or melody of the language.

Hearing one's own voice is quite the experience.  It doesn't sound quite like one would expect.  It makes one much more aware of the nuances that aren't the same as native speakers.  But it certainly helps in learning what adjustments to make.

The movies of our own lives so much like this tried and true language learning exercise.  When we get to see it, either from pictures, videos, or others' accounts of something that happened when we're spoken of as a third party, we notice things about ourselves that we wouldn't expect.  It allows us to make adjustments so that we can be more authentic to what we believe, what we want from life, or what we want to add to life.  I've come to fully respect these opportunities to make adjustments

After a number of adjustments have been made, this life becomes manageable, even fun, and we can live so much more in the moment.  To make the analogy complete, a person could say that we use moments for seeing ourselves as lessons in life fluency.

Fantastic imprint

Coca Cola put out a fantastic commercial this year.  It's easy to see what they wanted to do.  Coca Cola is recognized worldwide as represented by all the major languages of the world.  They wanted to show that diversity is important - Coke is not just one group's drink.  And the maker of Coca Cola wanted to be thought of as soothing, peaceful, and fun - in a word, beautiful.

I love commercials like this.  They're clear, insightful, upbeat, deliberate, and hopeful.  They make us feel good.

It is my hope that the footprint I leave in this world is the same as the imprint of this commercial.

Around the very next bend

Yep!!!

And this is only the first wave of something authentic using holographic technology.  It's not a prank.  It's a projection bracelet.  It's not a dream; it's a live project with donors who want to see its completion. You can find it at Cicret.com.

This device and few others will stake out a new territory.  What follows is the revolution that changes the definition of virtual from things that are simply data driven (as in 1s and 0s) to things that are visually driven.  The devices that follow the first wave will actually be three dimensional.  The difference between reality and virtualality will be seamless and nondistinctive.

The combination of the new Firestick from Amazon and the Cicret Bracelet will allow a whole different mode of operation for communicating, learning, planning, and defining sphere of influence and sphere of operation.  We're just on the cusp of something fantastic and a quantum leap from where we will find ouselves, but the prototype is underway.  I'm excited beyond belief!  I can connect dots from here.

Deep beauty

Depth only comes from two things: time and force.  This is very clearly seen in nature when a person looks at canyons, lakes, rivers, and oceans.  Over a long period of time, winds, waves, earthquakes, rains. and weight take their toll.  Rock gets carved out, eroded, moved, shaken, and pushed down.  That allows for water and related canyons to become deeper, to have more character.

Depth in people comes from the same two things: time and force.  This is very clearly seen as a person looks at people's losses, their misfortunes, their reversal of fortunes, their fortunes, their accomplishments, and the friends they keep.  Over long periods of time, people move, friends and family die, they work hard sometimes at two or more jobs, they play, they travel, they go to college, and they take a few chances now and then.  All of it together allows them to become deeper, to have character.

Depth happens, but not quickly.  Depth is forged.  It's a crucible.  But it makes us rich and beautiful beyond measure.

A little note about plenishing

I heard in a speech one time that a person is going into a storm, coming out of a storm, or in the eye of a storm.  One should never be complacent since change is about to happen or since the eye of the storm means that whatever has been achieved is short-lived until the next storm arrives.

That philosophy is a little pessimistic for my liking.  It is true that life has its ups and downs, but I'm not so sure about the analogy to storms.  Life is really complex.  We have a lot to do with how our circumstances happen around us, but at the same time, no one has complete control of circumstances.  People act unilaterally.  Problems arise that have ramifications no matter how they are solved.  Those ramifications influence the current situation, and life changes or is altered slightly.  But not everything that happens is a storm.  On some occasions accomplishments materialize, not problems, and those accomplishments influence the current situation, and life changes or is altered in some way.

No matter what the circumstances of life bring, however, one word is true about how we act as humans - plenish.  We are in the business of plenishing our lives during every one of its phases or through every change or alteration.  Plenish you say?  Right.  It's English, well, it is if you believe that what the Scots speak is English.  After the French defeated the British in 1066 A.C.E., they introduced the verb replenir to the English language.  The British changed the pronunciation and, therefore, its spelling to replenish.  At the time, the prefix re- didn't mean "again," it was an intensifier, so replenish didn't mean "to fill again," it meant "to fill completely."  Plenish, therefore, meant "to fill."  The people around London decided not to use the word much without a prefix, which later came to mean "again," which is why Americans don't use plenish either.  But, those darned Scots were too far north of London to care much what Londoners thought, so before one can replenish something it must be plenished in the first place.  Leave it to the Scots...

That's the beauty of life, though.  We get to plenish it during every phase.  What we plenish it with is up to us regardless of how the circumstances came about.  And it is exactly this thought that makes me able to smile regardless, to answer yes, everything's fine, and to be contented enough to be happy rather than miserable.  Certainly there are degrees of happiness, but there is an even keel in disaster or in ecstasy because we get to plenish our lives. 

Not coming, but here already

I'm pretty sure the electronic age has arrived.  When I go to eat, even at lowly McDonalds, there are a couple of TV monitors in each of the rooms.  My favorite place to go has 4 areas to eat in, and each of them has at least 6 TVs in them.  One of the rooms has a couple of screens that are about 6 feet across.  When I go to a movie theater, I see TVs in the snack area and down the halls leading to the film rooms.  Every football arena has at least one jumbo screen on the scoreboard.  On the way to work everyday, I pass at least 5 digital billboards not to mention the state's digital information boards telling of tickets, kidnappings, and number of deaths around the state.

I spent Thanksgiving with my family.  Within 10 minutes of arriving, my nephew was showing my mother on his iPad what he had looked up on ancestry.com about her lineage.  My brother was taking pictures with his new Samsung tablet and showing them all around.  My other nephew's wife was using her phone to take pictures and post them on her Facebook page.  The afternoon event was to fire homemade rockets using electronic ignitions.  Of course, there was the football game on a flatscreen in the afternoon after the meal.

Yep, it's the electronic age.  When I work, I use a laptop in every aspect of the work.  At home in off moments, I am looking up things to buy, to go somewhere, or to read the news online.  In my car on trips to anywhere and everywhere, it uses electronic power to display all the information on a couple different screens to keep everyone safe and entertained during the ride.

For my granddaughter of 2 1/2, any environment that she learns in that is less than what I am around most of the time, most days of my life, is something I will not in the least indulge even for the smallest amount of time .  Her world is electronic and will stay that way.  She  very likely will have to deal with artificial intelligence, and she will be ready.  She will go where I only dream to be  at present.  I am glad for her.

Interaction is not simplistic

There is a particular psychologist who has been really popular among very conservative people.  He has written books, established a radio presence, and produces platitudes for posters on Facebook.  Someone used his poster quote on me not long ago to point out that an action of mine didn't fall within the parameters of his counsel.

The whole field of psychology is analogous to reverse engineering.  Sometimes we can discern what is going on in the mind, and sometimes it's not so clear.  So, when reading the research from psychologists, we have to be really careful about what its conclusions are.  It is easy to generalize from a study to a wider population, for instance, when the study was conducted with a sample that was not large enough to be representative of all people.  Or the sample in the study was one that involved only college students or selected participants by other narrow or non-random method.

The psychologist mentioned above was sensitive to these issues when he first began practicing his craft many years ago.  But, after his first couple of books and popularity from his radio program and political activism, he has developed a God complex.  He speaks as if people's actions are a result of good or bad teaching.  He should know better.  People are not computers where the saying used to be true,"Garbage in, garbage out."  That principle has so many counter-examples, it shouldn't even apply to human behavior.  People are complex.  Their personalities, experiences, and backgrounds make for thousands upon thousands of possible combinations of reactions in given circumstances.

So, when he gives advice about parenting and marriage, he shouldn't speak in terms of certainty.  Love between any two given people is dependent, not on a general morality nor on religious doctrine, but on what two people's understanding of what governs their relationship.  When that understanding has been undermined, the relationship suffers.  Its continuance is solely up to the two people to agree to continue or part ways.  When children and parents interact, discretion has to be used.  One doesn't have fast and unbreakable rules.  Parents factor in love, danger, long range goals, difference in behavior acceptable to one parent but not to the other, family traditions, region of the country, whether the child's behavior is predicted to continue, personality differences, and many, many other factors when disciplining and guiding her or his child.

I dismiss this psychologist's simplistic stance to loving someone and raising children.  He needs to revisit his roots.  I am sorry that so many people continue to put their faith in his platitudes and certainties.  People need to strive for understanding of each other in their close and intimate relationships, not basing judgments on what an unconcerned, third party says is normal, godly, or right.

1 second late

The book, 212 degrees: the extra degree is a motivational book about going the extra degree to change hot water into boiling water, 211 being hot water, 212 being boiling.  The idea is to create extra energy, usually called synergy, and that extra energy creates the power to do mighty things, like steam which drives a train.

I had my own little "extra" several evenings ago.  It was equally motivational for me.  I was driving home at night.  I had stopped at a traffic light in the turning lane.  The particular intersection wasn't well lit, so I couldn't really see around me very well.  When the arrow appeared to turn, I only had to wait an  extra second for the car in front of me to start her turn.  I merely followed since it was really too dark to see much of anything beyond the intersection.

Two ticks later I saw the car in front jolt sideways as if it was bouncing off of a median.  I immediately thought the car had hit the concrete dividing the north and south bound traffic, but in a fraction of a second, I thought again, There's no median in this street.  Then I saw a second car bounce off of the first.  That really surprised me because I never saw it coming.  I didn't see it enter the intersection, and I didn't hear the crashing noise of metal popping.  I merely saw two cars after the initial impact, bouncing off of each other.

My mind flashed the thought, Now if I had been the first car to go through the traffic light, the first car would have been mine, and I would be in bad shape right now.  But, it wasn't.  I was divided in time from the accident by one second... just one second... ONLY one second.  

Timing is everything.  Time it right and life works out well.  Time it wrong and life sends you crashing into things you didn't see coming.  I am proud to have been one second late.  I hope it is representative of the ventures I will have in the coming year.  I could use that timing of things.  Just one second of time dividing something shattering from something smooth, satisfying and relieving.

Manipulation after quantification

It depends on how it is used, but most of the time I cringe at the use of the title Language Arts.  It apparently became fashionable when the free thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s decided that the expression of English was purely aesthetic in nature.  Free form of English standards in poetry led people of that time to consider that there should be styles of writing in every genre independent of forms and standards.  Thus, the idea of English as an art form began.  That worked its way into the normal way of titling the subject taken in school.  Teachers wanted students to learn the art of expression using words.

If anyone were to come to me for writing help, the first thing I would want to do is quantify it - turn words into numbers.  Numbers don't really allow for art form.  They lead one to draw certain conclusions.  Style comes after conclusions have been made.  Style comes as a manipulation of pieces of thought within the parameters set from conclusions drawn from numbers.

Quantifying words?  Yes, and there are two measures of language that act as an index number that tell the general health of writing.  They are reverse measures of each other, and they speak of the maturity and comprehensibility of one's writing.  After taking these two measures from samples of one's writing, then a person can understand style.  A person has to know what to fix in his or her personal development of maturity and comprehensibility before (s)he really knows when, where, and why to create a particular style.  The quantification process factors in complexity of sentence, that is, clause use, and comprehensibility, length of clause beyond what is expected.  Vocabulary is a different issue and is not figured into the quantification of the clause, or the terminal unit.

These two measures chart growth accurately much like taking a child to the doctor to show growth by getting height, weight, and general health condition.  Once maturity is reached, then one can begin to enhance the physical features such as cosmetic qualities of teeth appearance, face lifts, wrinkle control, breast size, and lap band surgeries.

Language arts can happen for those who know how to control when, where, and why a particular feature of a clause is expressed in a certain way.  But, language arts doesn't really happen for those learning to write.  In the learning stages, one learns to plan and organize thought and throw in a little vocabulary to make the paper shine.

There is one more benefit to quantifying writing.  The process helps one understand the bigger picture of communication better.  When the digital world emerged, color, pictures, and music all became binary code for transmission purposes.  Communication is largely oral and thought.  Writing only makes for a small percentage.  Communication is enhanced in different ways.  Musicians write songs with a video in mind that will match the words.  They also make music that is much clearer or that can be repeated because the electronic world makes repetition easier to mix into  a song (like a copy and paste function for word processing) and the notes don't taper off at the end making the tone sharper or flatter.  The digital code is simply one note, not the sharp or flat of the note.  Social media allows for most ideas to be communicated in pictures.  Uploading, downloading, and sharing are the skills used, not writing.  People merely put short captions with the picture in order to ferret out a particular part of the picture to comment about.

So, the  environment for language use has changed from the days of descriptive writing for stories and persuasive writing for artificial and hypothetical topics.  Quantification of language helps a young person to realize the limitations placed on writing and helps in the transition of the worded environment into the digital environment, which is the real key to the future.

A headshaker

Once in a while I get a good reminder of the way things used to be and the way some people still want things to be.  I was asked to review a "curriculum" (in reality, it was merely a syllabus) for a particular course.  After review, I told the two people in charge of administering it that it was good if the goal was to have a classic education.  I didn't mean it as a compliment.

The two administrators, however, were quite satisfied with that assessment.  They wanted to continue with their plan of implementing this syllabus.  I left shaking my head, thinking to myself that some children were about to be prepared for living well in the 19th and 20th centuries.  That's not just a headshaker, though.  It's a grand disservice that borders on grand deception.  Imagine their surprise when they get to the real world in about 2 to 3 years and the world doesn't require writing skills, but computer and mobile app skills.  Their ability to read and write has been absorbed into the bigger world of presentation, speaking, and graphic preparation of ideas.  Their knowledge of literature has been trivialized compared to knowledge of manipulating the world of numbers, algorithms, video splicing, and cropping for immediate upload.

Any programmatic approach to curriculum that ignores the capability of the computer and the enhancements the digital world expects to see in the next 10 years is an approach that needs to be shelved immediately, if not sooner.  In the U.S., time is money; productivity is not measured in literary elements but in dollars and cents; time is always of the essence; and vision is measured by the saying, "If you snooze, you lose."  None of these are reflected in the art of reading for reading's sake. Reading for problem solution... yes, and experimentation, experience, presentation, video logs, and video presentation yield those productive, long-lasting results.

While it's a shame for the students who will be subjected to this syllabus, I don't worry.  Natural Selection has a way of taking care of that part of the species who are weak and have no built-in plan for adaption.  These students share a common destiny with saber-toothed tigers, mastadons, giant sloths, and wooly mammoths.  The Ice Age was good while it lasted, but then, glaciers melted and global warming allowed a human race to progress quantum leaps from where it was.

True to life

How characters are developed in a story is many times the breaking line between good stories and great ones.  The writer has to keep in mind her or his purpose in writing, balance the action of the character with that of the conflicts involving the entire mix of the other characters, figure where the character needs to start in order to reach the end of the story in the condition the character needs to end up, and remain static and true to her or his colors or change in accordance with the dynamic required by the purpose, setting, and overall direction of the action.

In the movie St. Vincent, the main character has been smartly and intricately developed.  Vincent, called Vin throughout the movie, starts out as a man who has accepted his place in the great scheme of things.  He is portrayed with habits that would normally be unacceptable to “decent” people.  He smokes – a lot- and drinks to excess when the occasion calls for it.  He is used to caring for himself without the help of others, which is depicted when he falls to the floor in a drunken stupor.  After a few hours, he picks himself up, goes out to challenge movers who have destroyed his fence, yard and tree, and eventually cleans and bandages the cut to his head from the fall.  That doesn’t bode well for the rest of the movie.

Soon after this episode, Vin is seen driving home a prostitute and paying her for her services – at least partially – telling her he would be good for the rest of the money soon.  The scene is constructed to indicate that this behavior is routine.  Not long after that, Vin goes to the race track to bet on his winning horse.  But, of course, he loses.  And on top of this, character from the track hits him up for debts owed to him, which, naturally he couldn’t pay.  So, the character threatens him and extends his time by two weeks.  There is nothing redeeming about the character created.

And where does the writer want the character to wind up by movie’s end?  The same place… partially.  In the last scene of the movie, Vin goes outside to relax in his chair in the backyard.  He’s still smoking, the prostitute is still with him, but not as a prostitute.  She has become his live-in partner.  He still owes money for his debts, but the debt has been temporarily suspended, maybe permanently so.  He still drinks at his favorite bar.  So, what did the author do in the part of the story where all the action builds to a climax if he didn’t change the character?  Did the writer write a script for 90 minutes of action just to depict what people can see around them every day, that is with nobody changing.  You can’t change the stripes on a zebra, right?  No, people go to the movies to see characters who inspire, challenge, push through, and dare us to be better, not to show us the pathetic quality of human nature.

This brilliant writer wanted to show us subtly the true make-up of a hero.  Not the kind that saves the world in one fell swoop.  Not the kind that sacrifices his or her existence.  Not the kind that gives everything (s)he has to cause good to happen.  And not the kind that models the perfect life for others to follow.  Not at all. 

He constructs a character that rolls with the punches of life.  He has a few of those.  His wife has Alzheimer’s and has to live in a memory home.  So, Vin visits her 3 times a week to show his love and care for what there once was.  He honors a commitment when he doesn’t have to, and he does it without fanfare.  He takes on keeping a young man after school until his mother comes home even though he doesn’t want to nor did he plan to.  He even takes money in order to do it.  But, the boy learned lessons about life from Vin, all of them, both “good” and “bad.”  The prostitute brought Vin the sexual satisfaction he needed.  When she turned up pregnant, Vin didn’t ever ask who the baby belonged to.  The prostitute just chose Vin to help her give food and shelter to her new addition.  Vin didn’t hesitate to provide.  He knew he needed her and willingly made the accommodation.  And, even when the mother who left her child to his safekeeping learned from Vin that she needed to be a better parent by spending more time with him.

 

So, Vin gave, but he also took.  When he had to recover from his stroke about 2/3 of the way through the movie, he did so with the help of those whose lives he had given to.  It was a beautiful give and take.  Give a little, take a little.  So, the character that Vin started as is the character that he ended with… basically… but he learned something in between.  He learned in between about the give and take of life.  Nothing earth shattering, just something that moved an inch a year until he began changing.  It was subtle.   And, that is so true about real life.  We all change over time… an inch a year… until at the end we are essentially the same – yet somehow fuller, richer, better for the wear.  It will probably be a while before I see a movie where as true-to-life a character as Vin will appear again.

Perfect appellation

I'm thinking of a poor young 13-year-old who could have felt out of place in a new town in a lower than median income housing area.  But he didn't because his needs were met - by a man who cared for other people in a way that fit his own philosophy of life.

I was in another lifetime, one of toil and blood,
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud.
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I'm also thinking of a woman who gave sex for money but wound up pregnant and had no place to go. She could have felt depressed and suicidal, but she didn't because she knew that the man with whom she was having sex would take her in and provide a place to live - a man who provided for himself poorly but adequately enough for him, and would include a woman and child in the same poor but adequate way.

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word.
In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm,
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And I'm thinking of a woman who needed extra help to even survive.  But her survival was made possible - by a man who used her survival need for his own good.  In doing so, however, he supplied what she needed the most, after-school and weekend care for her son.  He did it his own way, according to his usual M.O.  He didn't break from visiting his usual bar, his trips to the race track, and his time set aside for his lady of the evening.

Not a word was spoke between us. There was little risk involved.
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

There's beauty in accommodation.  But, there's a richer beauty in accommodation without altering what you're doing - to have your circle around you, and be able to handle the way life adds and subtracts the people who join you within your circle.

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes, burned out on the trail,
hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Finally, I'm thinking of a man who structured his whole life around reacting to his circumstances without compromising who he was.  His circumstances made him stronger, but they strengthened the way he wanted to live life.  When his wife developed Alzheimer's Disease, he accommodated her and made the change he needed to continue to meet his own needs.  When he had his own stroke, he recovered in a way that suited only him at first, but he realized he would need to accommodate others as he recovered, so he did.  He did so to create his own shelter from his own storms.  He had been to war, won a medal for bravery, lost his wife,  was imposed upon by a neighbor, and chosen to house a prostitute and her newborn. Through it all, he gave shelter.  Life left him burned out, buried in hail, poisoned, hunted and ravaged.  But he had learned life's secret.  Through it all you have to be a real saint.  Right, it's his perfect appellation.  Let's call him Saint Vincent!

Beauty of the ordinary

After adulthood sets in, it's not long until a person realizes that peaches and cream are not life's theme song.  But, young adults still see Life as something to be tamed.  After a while, young people realize that Life is more volatile than the way they first looked at it.  There are moments where achievements are made, but they are only moments, not a way of life.  Highs and lows exist like a rollercoaster.  Some people, however, like the analogy of weather.  Weather is rarely even.  It comes in seasons and in a variety of forms.  The sun heats the earth, the earth follows its orbit away from the sun, Winds blow in the transition stage, the sun isn't so hot, then winds bluster, the cold follows.  Snow comes, precipitation falls, ice forms.  Then the Earth shifts in its orbit and the weather changes yet again.

Thus, life is filled with all kinds of weather with storms as the representative and salient feature of weather/Life analogy.  The key is to find shelter in the storm.  Bob Dylan has written the perfect song for this.  In the movie, St. Vincent, this song was chosen as a memorable and vivid way to symbolize all that had transpired.  Bill Murray comes out into his back yard to sing this song as the movie ends. The movie had depicted a number of life's storms in the four characters it followed. A young boy had been totally uprooted through divorce of his parents and his world had become stormy.  The shelter Vin had provided literally for the boy proved to be some of the only stability the boy experienced.  The prostitute that Vin saw had a storm of her own, and it was Vin that wound up providing shelter from her storm.  The young boy's mother, newly divorced from her husband, needed help in establishing herself again, and Vin was a key in helping to provide shelter for her storm by helping with her son.  Vin as well faced his trials valiantly, even the stroke that happened after being stressed by his money troubles.  At the end of the movie, his house was still standing as it always had been (it was hard to miss that symbol), and it appeared unchanged throughout the story.

So when Vin went to his back yard at the end of the movie, everyone appreciated the activity that happened there.  In one last scene, the writer capsulized all the storms that had happened by showing Vin getting settled in a yard that had no grass, only dirt.  He turned on a hose to water a plant that had already died.  When Vin tried to prop the hose on the pot of the plant, the plant fell off of its little table. So, Vin just returned the plant to its upright position and reproped the hose.  While this action was happening, Vin just sat in his double lawn chair, smoking his cigarette, comfortable, enjoying the pocket of time given to him to enjoy his "average" looking house in the background and his little plot of ground under the sun.  His doorframe and window sill needed painting.  The electrical wires had been placed in tubing running the length of his wall from roof to ground.  The paint was not colorful, but a humdrum earth tone tan.  Vin was singing along with the cassette as it played Shelter from the Storm.  He knew it by memory, so the viewer knew it was an important song to him, and Vin sang while smoking and watering his plant.

My hat is off to the script writer for showing a movie in which his theme and accompanying symbol were so excellent in showing the fantastic kindness, resilience, and strength of character extant in every person.  The ordinary was transformed into extraordinary. People can take heart because they provide stability for each other when they give others what they need -  a shelter's walls! It's what we would all do even though we are regular people acting in ordinary ways.  St.Vincent has to be the movie of the year for its tremendous subtlety in portraying the strength of Everybody in our ordinary, yet extraordinary, worlds!

Virtue and venom

The new film St. Vincent  gives a person a lot to think about.  Bill Murray plays a character that represents everybody.  There's nothing particularly endearing about Vincent, a person everyone calls Vin.  Vin is introduced in a bar drinking way too much.  He sees a prostitute once a week.  He bets at the local horse racing track during racing season to try to raise money for his debts.  His house is untidy, his furniture cheap, his habits sloven.  Nothing attracts us to this 65-year-old man living alone.  But he has a little bit of all of us in him.

We don't all drink - no - or have any of the other habits Vin has.  But we all have our quirks.  And like Vin, we are all comfortable with where we are in life.  We accept ourselves as we are even if no one else does.

Here's the thing about Vin.  He goes with the flow of life and does the best he can in whatever condition he finds himself.  We find out that his wife has been in a memory home because of Alzheimer's and he has been visiting her 3 times every week even when she stopped recognizing him. We see that he takes on helping raise a child even though he never had any of his own.  He teaches a 12-year-old boy how to survive in his blown-apart world that has divorced and angry parents who don't really know how to raise a child themselves.  He does things for the boy that everybody would do once in a while because he represents everybody.

We also find out that he didn't just get to be 65 without a history, and a glamorous history at that.  He fought in Vietnam and won a bronze star for valor.  He married a beautiful woman and lived with her until her disease set in.  Still he visited her and treated her royally on a regular basis.  Finally, he accepted his age and his station in life and carved out a niche for himself that he was comfortable with - as we all do and have done.

In a moving moment, the climax of the story, Vin is honored as a saint by the young boy he taught to accept life as it was.  Suddenly, everyone could see Vin for the good that he had in him.  Bravo, Bravo for the script-writer for producing a story that is the true story of all of us as human beings.  We are all a mixed bag of virtue and venom.  People love us and hate us, alternately, for who we are and what we do.  No one possesses a perfect track record if (s)he has lived for 40 years or more.  We all just hope we can be accepted for who we are - when we have moments of grandeur and moments of grunge.

Yes, yes, yes to St. Vincent, saint Everybody, because we are who we are living lives that are what they are (a significant expression used in the movie).  St. Vincent will probably not be the highest selling movie of the season, but it should be.  We can all use a nudge to see others for what they have to offer and to accept people as a total package with and without warts.  Kudos to St. Vincent for the best movie of the whole year.   It is truth in modern clothing!

When work is done

I hear a lot about people who just punch a clock for a paycheck.  They seem passionless.  They work to feed their families.  They work at a pace that insures their jobs last longer than they have to.  They never or rarely work above and beyond.  They don’t necessarily work in miserable conditions, they just don’t enjoy their jobs even if they are good or excellent at what they do.

And I hear and read a lot about people who are nuts about their work.  Every moment seems filled with tasks or results that feed people’s drive to do even better than the last goal they achieved.  Their steps have spring in them every day because they do what they enjoy so much.  Even bad working conditions are seen as opportunities to propel them to new heights.

I feel certain that I have met people that fit both stereotypes of those who work.  I have, in turn, eschewed those who work with little ambition and admired those who seemed to have the tiger by the tail.  At times, I have worked in miserable conditions, worked at a pace, and experienced little enjoyment.  At other times, I have achieved goals that caused me to strive to reach even higher.

But maybe reward from work is not found in the two extremes.   Maybe it’s found in the vitality a person has when work is done.  It’s seen in the optimism that the task at hand matters to the people receiving the product or service.  It’s felt in the comments received that reinforce that people’s efforts have been appreciated or have made a difference in someone else’s life.   The aftertaste of even one accomplishment keeps the present moment as a really sweet taste.

  

Interpreting country-speak

I have heard people say again and again, that Life doesn’t give us what we can’t handle.  I think that is country-people-speak for try harder to make lemonade out of lemons.  I don’t really think the saying is true on its face.  Life is very unpredictable and really can’t be controlled completely. 

I usually settle for little pockets of peace from the onslaught of the turn of events.  Sometimes in those pockets of controllable moments, Life seems so good, or at least as good as I am able to make my environment pleasant.  But, then, things happen that I have to react to.  That’s when I usually lose all aplomb and react in a way that shows I am not happy with the situation.  I usually stay in that state until something changes.

Most of the time, it’s not that I can’t handle the situation, it’s that I don’t like what is happening and it takes a while to work out of the situation.  I have to try to change the events back into something pleasant.  So, I have come to understand life’s events as those that are pleasant or unpleasant.  That way I can categorize my reactions to life as something I either want to change or not.  That’s a simplified view, but for me – it’s good enough to allow me to live a little.