"The Californian's Ten Commandments"

Herewith, the remainder:


       Thou shalt not murder; it keeps others from doing their own thing.

       Thou shalt not commit thyself to one person beyond the duration of a true, mutuallly satisfying relationship.

       Thou shalt not steal a Mercedes if it leaves anyone without wheels.

       Thou shalt be up front at all times with thy neighbor.

       Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's live-in sex partner; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's pad; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's boogie board.


             Alas,
                 Don

"The Californian's Ten Commandments"

       Some might say it's sacrilege; others might say I'm trivializing a profound document; still others might think the list is simply not funny; nevertheless, since I conjured these some years back and just rediscovered them, I thought they had a place in my blog.

       I'm figuring about five a day is all you can bear:

     
       I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out from back East.

       Thou shalt have no other gods before me, with the possible                            exception of the sun and the sea.

       Thou shalt not utter thy mantras and thy primal screams in vain.

       Remember the 3 day ski weekend to keep it holy.

       Honor thy father and mother's space.

A Couple More Puns I Came Up With

       Hatha Yoga is better than none.


       You have to be into it to intuit.

How a Street Sign Revived a Song

       I saw a street sign yesterday and said it aloud: "Sherman Way."   Something in it started me singing,

             "Dada Dada, etc., Boom-too-dee-ay."

"Sherman Way" had shaken my memory banks and resuscitated "Rose O'Day."  Same rhythm; it rhymes.  The chorus:

             Rose O'Day
             Rose O'Day
             ? ? ? ? ? ?
             Boom-too-dee-ay

Later, Internet texts of the lyrics filled in the Dadas with sounds that didn't quite fit my memory!

       Finally You Tube gave me the right words in Kate Smith's singing of it on record in 1942...when I was twelve!  72 years ago. 

             Rose O'Day
             Rose O'Day
             You're my filla-ga-dusha
             Shinna-ma-rusha
             Bahl-da-ra-da
             Boom-too-dee-ay

Thus did a random street sign, once uttered, renew the life of a truly forgotten song.

       Kate sings it for you here.

      

A Couple Puns I've Come Up With

        If somebody dies in a sex orgy, notify next of kink.

                                              
        What is a battle of wits?  A journey through mind territory.

"Where Do a Poet's Words Come From"

       A former student of mine who is a teacher,  a friend, a poet, approaches his own retirement from teaching.

       In Michael's honor, and with thanks, I place this poem of his in my blog.  I think it says beautifully...indeed, poetically...just what it is a poet does.




               WHERE DO A POET'S WORDS COME FROM



               the wind, but not borne on the wind, something

               inside the wind, some feeling which suggests

               possibilities, a joy and a sadness intertwined



               the ocean, but not riding the waves, something

               intrinsic, a force which summons song, which

               compels utterance of those twins, hope and despair



               the rain, but only when one stands or walks in it,

               its steady commitment to grief, not the words of

               grief, but the feel, the taste, the forgiveness, the prayer



               the mountains, not their grandeur, rather their

               endurance, their ineffable patience, their connection

               of earth and sky, their challenge to rise above, to dare





               Michael L. Newell

Earth Day every day

       Earth Day was two days ago.   But every day should be Earth Day because we owe ourselves to planet earth--it is our home.

       And just as "humus" is Latin for earth, so Latin has supplied us the word for beings who are of the earth--human, us!  Yes, it is etymologically true.  "Human" beings are "earth" beings.

       And for those who would like to visit or revisit my "Earth Day Reading" of April 22, 2013, you can find that link here.

       And for some further connections of "humans" to this "earth," may I suggest a return to my post of August 14, 2013.

       HAPPY earthday.       

    

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--4

[The same words of Hillel, in Hebrew or translation, support both explications.  Each has merit.  But analogous with particles and waves, each will give only a single account of the saying.]

              Language too, like physical properties, has so much “folded into” it, in variable word meanings and roots, in interchangeable grammatical constructions, in altered readers and readings over centuries, that this “implicative” order of language, probably its fundamental reality, must remain indeterminate.

              God and the gods of language willing, this essay did not have too much “folded together” in it.  For I can see how that might                                        “complicate”    things.

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--3

[This is a traditional explication or folding out of meaning.  It  

is quite clear and unambiguous.  And it is worth pondering.]

       But cast a different eye at the saying, one conditioned by a more recent existential mode of thought, and lo and behold, another explicit statement can be “unfolded” from it.  Stressing the “am” and the “be” in the first line (“If I am not...for myself, who will be for me?”), this explication arises:

               If I do not take the responsibility to carve out my own                               identity, who will fulfill my existence in place of me?  



Stressing “am” and “what” in the next line ("If I am only for myself, what am I?"), the meaning becomes,

               If only I am able to fulfill my existence, what is it that I am?
  


Leaving the third line ("And if not now, when?") to mean, 

               And if I don’t start becoming that now, whenever will I?
   
       The same words of Hillel, in Hebrew or translation, support both explications.  Each has merit.  But analogous with particles and waves, each will give only a single account of the saying.

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--2

[This is the "explicative" order; it is unambiguous and clear.]

       Light can behave explicitly like particles at times... like matter...and explicitly like waves at other times...like energy...but the reality of light is fundamentally ambiguous.  Neither the explicative order of matter nor that of energy will suffice, and light “itself” remains “folded into” the implicative order of nature.*

       I find a similar phenomenon in language.  Generations have taught an understanding of this ancient saying of Rabbi Hillel:
               If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
               If I am only for myself, what am I?
               And if not now, when?

An explication de texte for this saying might be: 
               If I don’t believe in myself and espouse myself, who will                                  believe in me and support me? 
               But if I am only out for myself and my own interests, what                                 kind of human being am I? 
               And if I don’t act on both of these premises now, whenever                                 will I?  


This is a traditional explication or folding out of meaning.  It  

is quite clear and unambiguous.  And it is worth pondering.

* David Bohm in "New Ideas in Order" from the CBC radio series Physics and Beyond, done during the 1980s.

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--1

       It’s nice to know there’s a simple image at the basis of what might otherwise be a very “Latinate” and abstract set of terms--”implicit,” “explicit,” “implicate,” and “explicate.”  The little “pli” syllable is the bearer of that image:  “to fold.”  A thing as easy to imagine as folding clothes or a blanket can even help one stay with a modern physicist’s use of such words.
 
       David Bohm says that today’s physics posits an “explicative” and an “implicative” order of things.  The underlying reality is “implicative,” “folded in,” irrevocably ambiguous; but from time to time, we are able to “unfold” from that realm a precisely statable explicit characterization of reality.  This is the “explicative” order; it is unambiguous and clear.

On Stage Fright, Part 3

[I knew everybody was waiting for my next words, but I was frozen.]

       Something told me that movement might help break the ice jam.  I turned and walked laterally across the stage, and as I walked, the line came back to me.  Then I realized I couldn’t blurt it out or everyone would be certain I’d had a bad lapse.  I took a couple more steps, turned deliberately toward the audience as though this had been a significant pause for effect (though the content didn’t call for it), and calmly but forcefully came forth with the line.  I really don’t think anybody knew I’d lost my place.

       I promised not to talk to myself like that again in the remaining moments of the speech.

       I won the contest and a $50 prize, but things went almost too smoothly.  Maybe that’s why Chinese painters put a small purposeful thumb smudge on their paintings.  Human efforts are not supposed to be “perfect.”

On Stage Fright, Part 2

[I had written out the speech, memorized it, and rehearsed it.  Listening to the other speeches that night, I thought mine would probably measure up in content.]

       When I delivered the speech, I remember the wonderful feeling of having a large audience’s rapt attention and knowing what it means to have everyone “in the palm of your hands.”  The speech went on flawlessly, seamlessly, so much so that I began to experience being behind myself watching the beauty of the occasion, until a small voice slipped in before I could stop it:  “Suppose you forgot your speech at the end of this sentence.”  I came to the end of the sentence.  I couldn’t remember the next line.  “You idiot,” I said to myself.  I knew everybody was waiting for my next words, but I was frozen.

       (Concluded tomorrow)

On Stage Fright, Part 1

       It was the annual Ludden Freshman-Sophomore Oratorical Contest at the University of Minnesota.  I was a freshman who had done well in a public speaking class and a couple high school contests.  I was encouraged by my teacher to enter the competition, something like a 20 minute persuasive speech on any serious subject.

       Emery Reeves’s The Anatomy of Peace was a popular book of the time, proposing and arguing for World Government just after World War II.  It was a more serious giving up of national autonomy than the UN, and it struck a chord with me, and many others.

       Outside of drawing too heavily on that single source, my speech was a good one, well constructed, and I believed strongly in the material.

       I had written out the speech, memorized it, and rehearsed it.  Listening to the other speeches that night, I thought mine would probably measure up in content.

Signatures Anonymous

       If cursive handwriting is no longer taught (it's already being allowed to disappear from school curricula), what of signatures?

       Can one's printed name be considered a signature?  In my lexicon, a signature is handwritten, and I do mean "written," not printed.

       And what becomes of handwriting experts?  They can identify people from the peculiarities of their writing, but maybe and maybe not from their printing.

       If someone says, "Put your John Hancock here," we know what it means from that flourishing signature on the Declaration of Independence.  Has all that gone overboard in a flood of "texting"?

"Spendthrift"

       I recently spent a lot of money in only two days and called myself a "spendthrift."  It's a term I always feel funny using because it seems to me it should mean "thrifty."

       But "thrift," I find out, once meant "prosperity"...as in "thrive"... not "frugality," and that earlier meaning hangs on in "spendthrift" too.  In other words, "spendthrift" means "spending one's prosperity," wasteful, wreckless spending.

Words that Push Us Forward

       A bright fellow draftee in the Korean conflict introduced me to four lines of poetry that have stuck with me.  I now learn the poet was a Vermonter of whom Robert Frost said the following:  "To a saint and a reformer like Sarah Cleghorn the great importance is not to get hold of both ends, but of the right end.  She has to be partisan."

                      The golf links lie so near the mill
                      That almost every day
                      The laboring children can look out
                      And see the men at play.
                                 Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, (1876-1959)




 

Brushing Up My French

       My son's recently trekking through the mountains and glaciers of Chile where avalanches are common reminded me of these notes I took while driving through glacier and mountain country in Canada, reading the signs:

"Danger Falling Rock" is in French Chutes de Pierre.  Pierre must be rock.  Well, Pierre, South Dakota, must be Rock.  Falling Rock doesn't sound as good as Chutes de Pierre.  I hear it in the words.  I hear the danger. . . chutes de pierre [SHOOT de pih-AIR].  Chutes is also in "waterfall," chutes d'eau.  This is a refresher for my French.  And I'm learning some things I didn't learn in French class.

E. E. Cummings once lamented:

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be                                                           living apart.

You were expecting maybe print copies?

"Same Product New Packaging"

       I needed to replenish the sunscreen I had for hot days ahead.

       The pharmacy confronted me with eight bottles and tubes of different sunscreens.  None looked like mine at home, as I recalled it.  Reading ingredients helped a little, but I wasn't certain of the name.

       I grabbed a plastic bottle more aggressively and saw a tag on the back--"Same Product  New Packaging."   Fine...EXCEPT... how did I know WHAT product if I couldn't really recall the OLD PACKAGING.

       In frustration, and need to get something, I bought it.  "Same Product" yes, but the "New Packaging" only accomplished reducing the amount of "product" in it for the same price.

       As for me, they could at least have put a picture of the "Old Packaging" on that tag to reassure their customer!

      

"You can't preach to a community you don't know"

[CONCLUSION:  See yesterday, please]

       Once the community is known, once the dialogue and exchange is real, something can be imparted.

       In his book The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks tells of his introduction to Sufi ways and understandings.  For a number of years, Barks had contact and interaction with a Sufi sheikh, which helped him in doing his eloquent versions of Rumi’s poetry.
 
       At one point Barks asked Bawa Muhaiyaddeen “if what I saw in his eyes could someday come up behind my eyes and look out.”   Barks says the sheikh began speaking of the subtle relationship between a teacher and a community, “Not until the I becomes we.”

"You can't preach to a community you don't know"

       “You can’t preach to a community you don’t know.”  This was said by a preacher who was helping install a rabbi at our temple.  He knew our new rabbi well.  He was the senior rabbi at the temple our new rabbi had just served at for six years.
 
       Preacher went on that the door must always be kept ajar and she, our new rabbi, already knew this; he’d observed her for those years.

       What is it the community supplies that allows a teacher to teach, a preacher to preach?  Doesn’t the teacher know something more than the community, and therefore they need him or her?  That would seem to be so; yet the teacher, knowing something more, still must know what's not known at the beginning of preaching:  the community itself.

(Concluded tomorrow) 

Say it "trippingly on the tongue"

       Here is one of those found tongue twisters I relish coming upon:

                                         "plausible plot point"

Can you say it five times fast without a false note?!

YYURYYUBICURYY4ME

[Please see yesterday's post before going further.]

       I was reminded of this puzzle while listening on the air to a discussion among scientists on chromosomes that differentiate the sexes.  The X's and Y's were flowing.  Did I hear "Two X's and one Y," "Two Y's and one X"?  "Two Y's"?   

       My friend Eric had put me on to the above puzzle/poem, and my difficulty with it had been I couldn't make the first two letters say "Two Y's," which would have unlocked the conundrum:

       Too wise you are
       Too wise you be
       I see you are
       Too wise for me

       While listening to the scientists, I also realized what a panoply "Two Y's" had for the ear:

       Two Y's
       Two I's
       Two eyes
       Too wise

They are all pronounced exactly the same!
       

Here's One to Ponder...

       Do you know the following?  When I first saw it on the page, I puzzled for a long time and couldn't make it out, finally had to give up and ask my friend for help.  I'm supposing in a Twitter age it's a snap, but maybe not.

                        YYURYYUBICURYY4ME



      

How I Read Aloud, 17

[Such a poem, when uttered, is...an experiential garden where fellow humans meet and revel.]

       And what does any of what is said above have to do with voice?   If anything, the voice being responsive to concerns that lie within the poem and within one’s heart can warm the voice up and make it listenable.  But attention to voice itself and what it can do will leave listeners with nothing but a disembodied voice, only their act of listening and your act of reading, nothing important, just a mutual trance of self-reflectedness.  That’s a prospect I do my best to walk away from.
 
       And when you are walking toward the poem and into the poem and what’s happening there, you are walking away from that.

    Don

How I Read Aloud, 16

       Going through something like this process helps the poem belong to the one reading it aloud, keeps it close to the heart, to life, and therefore potentially close to the people with whom one will be sharing it.  Such a poem, when uttered, is not a discomfited, self-conscious pronouncing of another person’s words to a group of detached auditors. It is instead an experiential garden where fellow humans meet and revel.

How I Read Aloud, 15

[But I can be a partner to a sunset and a witness to the perfection of the day's end, seeing its absolute completeness.]

       And now the speaker/reader (you or I) and our audience’s lives are brought into the picture more closely for the last two lines.  This day that is coming to an end is one of “the days that keep dawning,” and by which we “age.”  Somehow the days’ dawning and setting and our dawning each day while we age, are encompassed in that single line.  And the “lived-out day” (how apt and affirming that phrase--think if the choice had been “used-up”) is perfectly parallelled with the physical day’s limits.  We donate the “lived-out day” back to something much vaster than a human life, but by which ours is measured, “eternity.”

       Those last two lines lure us magnetically back and forth between the poles of “age” and “eternity” through the field of “lived-out” and ever “dawning” days.

How I Read Aloud, 14

       The day “departing” and lying “open at your feet” asks that you remember and imagine that special sunset of yours; maybe in my case I conjured Pacific Palisades because the sunset is more “at your feet” there, on a cliff above the Pacific.  But to each his or her own.

       Something in me resisted a little “You can’t create anything yourself,” except when on second thought, I compared my creations to anything like this, like the world.  But I can be a partner to a sunset and a witness to the perfection of the day’s end, seeing its absolute                                                    c o m p l e t e n e s s.