Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch

As is often the case, I'm unsure what wi-fi service will be like during my time in three national parks over the coming weeks. If all is well, I plan to include a picture or two with some of the posts that get through. Though any image of treasures like those I'll be experiencing in Yosemite, Sequioa, and Kings Canyon are doomed to be inadequate, regular readers have sometimes commented on enjoying an occasional picture to augment a reflection. Promise to do my best to minimize the cornpone level.

In the meanwhile, I'm pleased our time away will be spent with three good friends we've been travelling with for a few years now. In total, one of those three has now visited seven National Parks with us (ten after this trip), and the other two friends have been our companions to three of those same seven; their tally with us will be up to four National Parks after this trip. And I'm even more excited that our time away will also mean spending a week with my daughter, son-in-law, and drum roll, please ... my brilliant, musical genius, all around joy, eight-month-old grandson. It's a good thing I set the tone early in the life of my book club to keep grandparent crowing to a minimum. Otherwise, I'm afraid the members of my club would have been subjected to non-stop bragging, prompting them to run from the last several meetings screaming. I can't help myself. 

Check in with me here periodically over the coming weeks. If no reflections from the bell curve are forthcoming for more than a few days at a time, assume one of the following: 1.) Spotty wi-fi; 2.) Your favorite blogger is too awestruck by the splendor of our National Parks to sit down at the laptop; or ... 3.) My grandson needs help translating The Iliad from the ancient Greek. 

A Gift and a Fuzzy Line

"I am here to live out loud.": Emile Zola

I've always considered my abundant energy a gift. But more than a few times in my life, people have told me that energy was wearing them out. I'm not always able to tell when my passion for something - and the energy feeding that passion - has overtaken me. Sound familiar to anyone? With people close to me, I can sometimes detect a tired look in their eyes telling me perhaps my passion-infused energy has crossed into attention-seeking territory. But picking up those signals from others remains an ongoing challenge. How about that? Familiar at all?

Where is that fuzzy line between living life out loud - as Emile Zola extols - and being too loud? As an extraverted man who has intense passions, that question is on the front of my radar regularly. We men have been enculturated to expect people to listen when we speak. And the extraverts among us are temperamentally inclined to use our share - or more - of airtime. Add in those intense passions and it's no mystery why the mansplainers of the world trigger me to the point of apoplexy. It's like looking at the worst image of myself. 

Using my gift wisely is a life's work. Which gift of yours presents you with a similar dilemma?

 

"Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason": from Beartown (2016) by Fredrik Backman

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Living Life Aloud

Jonesing for a Discussion

Among the things I'm grateful for, having a large number of readers in my life is near the top of the list. Even anticipating a discussion about a worthwhile book with any of these folks infuses me with energy. 

That delicious anticipation enhanced my recent re-read of The Interpreter of Maladies (1999), an extraordinary collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. My rationale for re-reading? Easy; a good friend - one of those readers I mentioned - had borrowed our copy. Soon after checking in to see how she was doing, I suggested we discuss whatever she'd finished up that point. (I'd already borrowed a library copy.)

But soon after reading the final heartbreaking sentence of the masterful opening story ("They wept together for the things they now knew" from A Temporary Matter), taking one story at a time became an untenable strategy for me. Lahiri's unshowy prose and piercing observations - particularly about assimilation - hurtled me through the second story (When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine), an equal in every way to the opener. After then completing the title story, there was no turning back. Guitar, exercise, even eating moved back in the queue. The title story is so exceptional that I recalled many of its telling details from my first time through the book. But re-reading it revealed additional layers that had escaped me back in 1999. Such is the skill of this gifted author.

As assured as the next five stories are, the closer (The Third and Final Continent), elevated this reading experience from exceptional to transformative. After finishing that treasure, my jones for the discussion with my friend took on an almost frenzied aspect. I started planning which story we'd discuss first. One of my favorites or hers? I scoured my notes for some of the subtle details Lahiri sprinkles throughout each story like delicious treats and began wondering which of them my friend noticed. And which details did she pick up on that I missed? Which words, phrases, passages of dialogue, sentences, paragraphs that won't leave me alone are haunting her? Until we have our discussion, what do I do with all this energy? Can we start over again right after we finish?     

Words for the Ages: Line Thirty-Five

"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." 

Until today's iteration, I've adhered to a guideline established at the inception of this series in 2017, i.e., not to repeat any lyricist. But a recent discussion about confirmation bias with a new friend persuaded me it was time to forego that guideline, at least this one time. Carefully re-read those twelve words above from The Boxer and share with me a lyric that more succinctly captures our shared human tendency to ignore information that doesn't support or reinforce our worldview. I'm standing by.  

In addition, if any lyricist deserves to be cited more than once in a series entitled Words for the Ages who can reasonably take issue with that lyricist being Paul Simon? Have others been more influential than him? Perhaps. More literary? Maybe. More consistent? Emphatically not. Put Paul Simon's entire catalog against any other twentieth century lyricist and compare song-by-song. After doing that comparison, return here and make your case for who has been more consistent. I'll wait.

In the meanwhile, I welcome nominations for an aphoristic lyric you would cite as words for the ages. Reach for a lyric that stands alone, i.e., one that doesn't depend on a rhyme to complete the thought. Next, make whatever you nominate terse enough to be easily recalled. The main point? Timelessness. I'll be right here.  

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Words For The Ages, Line Fourteen

Another Sweepstakes Win

If there's a sweepstakes for good fortune in a life, I've been a winner more than once. 

My winning streak started with a devoted mother who was involved in nearly every aspect of my young life. Chaperone on trips of every type, cub scout den mother, president of the grammar school PTA. I felt loved and cared for my entire childhood. My turbulent adolescence tested my mother in several ways. She passed, her love for me never wavering.     

If I worked at it, I could perhaps conjure a mother equal to the one my daughter has had. No doubt, like all mothers, she made mistakes with our only child. But ask me to recall anything specific beyond trivialities, and I'd have trouble. Without question, my daughter couldn't have had a better role model as an independent woman than her mother. In that respect, even conjuring an equal is challenging for me.

  

My daughter never knew either of her grandmothers. How then to explain her immediate and undeniable suitability as a new mother other than the adoration and attention her own mother showered on her from the second she entered the world? And so it was, from the first moments I saw my daughter holding my new grandson last October. In her face, her touch, her very essence, I sensed both my mother's spirit and my wife's laser-like focus on our daughter as her life began.  

I now look forward to the day my grandson recognizes he's won the same sweepstakes as me. With a mother and grandmother like his, I suspect I won't be waiting long.   

Life Is a Series of Hellos and Goodbyes

A few months back I began a journey with a dear friend I met in 2015. I was part of her journey because her husband of sixty years - also a cherished friend - kept me informed from afar.   

Her life was filled with immense love and unswerving faith. I was not there at the end, but her whole family and many friends were by her side. 

She was a person of limitless grace. To say I will miss her is inadequate. 

"Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes; I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again": from Goodbye to Hollywood (1976) - Billy Joel

Adding Another Keeper

Before stopping full-time work in 2010, I found it much easier discovering novelists I wanted to continue reading vs. non-fiction authors. At present, which group - novelists or non-fiction writers - has more of your favorites?

Soon after finishing The Wager (2023) - David Grann's astonishing tale of "shipwreck, mutiny, and murder" - I did a quick review of my book journals and realized my ratio of go-to novelists vs. non-fiction authors is fast approaching parity. Grann first dazzled me with Killers of the Flower Moon, a book that blew away every person in my book club. Now, along with Erik Larson, Jill Lepore, Jon Krakauer, Susan Orlean - to name a few - Grann has joined my growing list of non-fiction authors whom I'm sure I'll continue reading for the rest of my life. 

Foremost of the elements that captivated me reading The Wager were the first person quotes Grann uses throughout, lifted directly from the still-intact journals from 1740-42 kept by some of the shipwreck survivors. But it takes a writer with Grann's gift to turn those dry journal entries into a compelling narrative. In addition, Grann also shines a light on the frequently mindless arrogance of the era with powerful passages like this: "European explorers, baffled how anyone could survive in the region - and seeking to justify assaults on indigenous groups - often labeled the Kawsegar and other canoe people as cannibals, but there is no credible evidence of this."  

"We all impose some coherence - some meaning - on the chaotic events of our existence."  When a sentence like that appears early in a book, I'm reasonably certain I'm in capable hands. David Grann is clearly a keeper.

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Such A Life

Journey to the Past

Though I've been open about my age since the inception of my blog fifteen + years ago, I've also tried hard to avoid dwelling on it, especially with respect to some of the indignities that can occasionally accompany codgerhood. That said, sometimes a reflection - like today's - demands placement in a coot context. So ...

When did you last spot money on the ground somewhere? How much? Enough that you felt it worthwhile to bend over and pick it up? Recently, I spotted a $5.00 bill, picked up without hesitation. What would you have done? Would you perhaps briefly ponder what $5.00 could buy in 2025? I did. Pocketing the bill, I envisioned two sixteen-ounce coffees at my local convenience store. Those of you favoring those barista concoctions would of course need more. Me? I'd end up with some change for my jar back home.  

My next thought? Genuine surprise at how unexcited I was spotting that $5.00 bill. Old farts: With me yet? As soon as I recognized my nonchalant attitude about having $5.00 more in my pocket than I'd had moments before, the time machine opened unto 1973. Twenty-four-year-old Pat spots $5.00 on the ground. Unexcited, nonchalant, blase? Are you kidding? In 1973, while making my living as a musician, I would routinely get off the Garden State Parkway on Bloy St. in Hillside to avoid paying .25 at the Union toll plaza. And then I'd get right back on the Parkway past that plaza and continue to my gig. After the gig - if I'd paid my month's rent - I would sometimes stop for a cup of coffee at a diner = .10 including refills. Yes, I would avoid that same Union toll going home.   

For the non-curmudgeonly or anyone born on third base who thinks they hit a triple, apologies if today's reflection has limited resonance. For me, that $5.00 bill kicked off a journey to the past.