At Sea


In every book that I have read about the sea the engines thrum and sea spray salts the faces of the crew or passengers, but on the Navigator, Royal Caribbean’s newest ship, by design thrum is neither felt nor heard, and sea spray is sighted only at the bow of the ship where its knife edge parts the water, a thousand feet from the deck. While on the ship the closest a passenger gets to the sea would be in any of the three or four saltwater swimming pools that could be found on the top two decks. As the pools were filled with most of three thousand passengers I avoided them, keeping a wary eye out for any wayward pool splash that might be aimed at me by frolicking Coney Islanders.

Of course, no pool in the Caribbean would be complete without Pina Coladas and a steel drum band, so the ship’s owners have provided several bars and a band, amplified at a level high enough so that should the guest be swimming at the bottom of the pool, ten feet under water, he or she could still hear the merry music.

There are always a few guests who carry with them glum and serious faces, wrinkled brows, and a Social Director has been provided to nudge them out of their self-concerned reveries and into a Royal Caribbean euphoria. One soon learns to paste a smile on ones’ face, as armor against said Social Director’s efforts, should one want to be alone a la Greta Garbo.

Return from a well-deserved rest


Yes, rightfully, you have asked the question: "Rest From What?" "From what?" you say? Well, a vacation is always needed to re-create oneself--thus, recreation. Nes Pa?

Maria thought that getting me on a cruise would be good for our joint soul--I must add, however, though not our joint bank account.

We cruised what is known as the Western Caribbean, in the company of some 3100 other souls in need of rest, and 1100 persons assigned to wait upon us hand and foot. Well, we were well waited upon. The service was enthusiastic, willing, and skilled.

Of course, not one American was to be seen in service. 37 other countries were represented, and the citizens of those countries were drilled and trained in the custom of service as practiced in Victorian Days. With the single exception of facing the wall when passengers passed, all other customs known to me were practiced. As far as the help was concerned crisp uniforms, reserved, quiet and discreet conversations were the mode and rule of the Cruise. Beds were made and re-made twice a day, guests were fed at least five times a day, and snacks, buffets, and other treats were available at all other times. One man was caught skipping Second Breakfast and the Captain ordered him to be force-fed by pushing a red rubber hose down his throat.

The shipboard help had been taught their place and behaved accordingly but not so much could be said for us passengers (now called guests, by the way) Passengers (guests) dressed as they wished, some were ready for Coney Island, others got the idea that they were going to be on the Rivera. As for me--Ft. Lauderdale style was fine. Full Blown whites: White ducks, white belt, white shirt, white bucks, straw boater with a white band.


+++++++++++

More later as I am up past my bedtime and duty calls--or is that the little woman's voice I hear?

Everything

You came one day and
as usual in such matters
significance filled everything--
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood or sat,
this way or that. When
you left, the area around here rose,
A tilted tide, and everything that
offers desolation drained away.

A. R. Ammons

Here's a worrisome piece of data I picked up in Adbuster's Magazine Sept - Oct 2003:

"Ironically paying for biodefense vaccines threatens the very research that produced them. The White House Budget Office stipulated that NIAID (Nat'l Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases) must purchase $233 million worth of a new Anthrax vaccine, and while the money must come from NIAID's budget, it isn't to touch the biodefense programs. "

"NIAID must slash funding grants to other areas of its research program--like basic immunology, infectious diseases, and AIDS research--in order to bankroll the bio-war demand. "

September 17, 1902 --Dad's date of birth. Brooklyn, NY

Dad would have been 101 today. If he's here looking over my shoulder, I miss you Dad--and wish we could have a conversation. Maybe you could get Grandpop, and the three of us could all be the same age--say 50--right now. What a talk that would be. I'd like to know you as a 50 year old man talking to me as a 50 year old man.


And then, maybe, a later talk bringing everyone up to 65. But each of the same age--50 and then 65.

Gee, now that I think of it--how about a series of conversations at each age starting with ten--then every five years...?

+
+ Decision
+
Dante says that the vestibule of Hell is reserved for those who cannot make up their minds.

Be this or that
When things are done
Both rain and snow have friends
But slush has none.

.................TRUTH......................

Most of us have an Operational Truth that we use to move through life. Every leftist and rightist has his own Truths. As do fanatic atheists and fanatic believers. Truth is never compatible with dogma.

Each of us looks in a mirror when he seeks Truth, but our eyes are blinded by what we have already seen in the past.

mek

mek

+
+
+
What you give
..................Write it in the sand
................................What you receive
..........................................Carve it in granite.

Basically distrust comes from not trusting our parents. If parents cannot be trusted than no one can be trusted. And if someone were very good to me he couldn't be for real because then my parents would be proven even worse.

Can you imagine the parent at bedtime who whispers into her child's ear the hypnogogic suggestion that "no one will ever love you more than I do?"

How then, can this child grow up to trust and believe in the love of any other person?

Marriage is like fine wine...let it mature

Cleaning up notes from the backs of envelopes, matchbooks, and assorted notebooks.


I am a fairly educated person, but not a scholar, and as an educated layman I do quite a lot of reading. But when reading certain authors I run into a macaronic tendency to drag in untranslated quotations. This is an annoying carryover from the days when educated people were expected to know Latin, Greek and a few modern languages like French and German.

Aside from a smattering of Spanish I have none of these languages, and I daresay that few of my contemporaries do either. Its time to start translating quotations, if only in footnotes. Leaving them untranslated has become de trop.

***

In Paris, when the War was over, Albert Camus, having seen both Nazis and Communists close up, defied democracy as that regime created and sustained by those who know that they do not know everything.

James Russell Lowell

Democracy has the unpleasant "habit of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers That Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the Powers that Ought to Be. "

***

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is better looking than he had imagined.

/
People who give advice should be prepared to give some help.

***

It was in the old days--we tried to be mad in a sane world.
Now, how hard it is to be sane in a mad world.

/ from a note made to myself this summer in NYC:

Two very well appointed black women on the Madison Avenue bus. In the course of enthusiastic office gossip one remarks to the other: "He must respect me--I'm no house nigger."

Still, after so many years Blacks cannot escape the chains of blackness in America. (Or are they only perceived chains?) I wonder to myself why have the links have held, why have they not rusted away?

>

light and darkness
good and evil
matter and God
truth and falsehood

>
Iris Murdoch ----from The Jackson Dilemma

...An awareness of the tragedy of human life, good and evil, crime and punishment--remorse.

Surveying myself in the mirror, there was little light, the mirror old, I always wondered what I looked like. --This connects with who am I, what I am...I wonder why everyone does not feel like this, or is it a gift, free from my gods, an understanding of the only reality which is in truth that we are nothing. The mirror now shows me mostly my father, my brows thickening, perhaps...

/
/
/
Hares may pull the beards of dead lions.

"Postmodernism is about the reappropiation of the past, the making real of false consciousness, the revaluation of values. Until now we have been living in a false culture, surrounded by mass-produced kitsch....We borrow from the past, we have no history so we write it where it doesn't exist." Igor, Between East & West

imaginary realism-- imaginary truth.

ROBOTIC AYN RAND

Need advice about your latest megalomaniacal scheme? If only you could ask history's greatest megalomaniac, "novelist" and "philosopher" Ayn Rand. Too bad she's dead. But wait! In 1963, a secret cabal of Objectivists intent on taking over the Student Union at MIT built the first robotic Ayn Rand, and now you can own a Randroid® based on their original design. Comes with stock phrases such as "Morality ends where the gun begins," "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent," and "Nathaniel! Bring me another gin and tonic!"

Price: US$50,000 includes software*
*software tends to be rather buggy. For instance, your Randroid may oppose immigration, yet be an immigrant herself. She may oppose infidelity, yet cheat on her husband. She may espouse individuality, yet believe that only those who follow her are individuals. She may oppose the control of individuals by organizations, yet laud corporate power. These bugs can not be repaired.


Item Available at VillainSupply.com

The few who have everything-- the many who need something. Which side are you on? The few who are unwilling to give up anything? Or the deserving many? Know which side you are on. It is amazing, however, that many of the many take the side of the few. Have I said that the masses are asses?

Last night the little woman and I went to see the International Sport Latin Ballroom Dancing Competition at the Diplomat Hotel. This is not dancing as we knew it in the Catskills. The two Titos would be very surprized, shocked (!) to see this highly stylized, ritualistic, robotic dancing.

The "sport" in the title of the competition refers to the furious movements that partners make on the floor. The Tango's ritual seem to be carried over to every dance, Rhumba, Tango, Cha Cha, Cha. These partners really sweat during their performance and when they violently turn their heads the sweat sprays a circle around their bodies. Did I see a rainbow in the rain of persperation? Maybe. There was some agreeable grace in the slides of the Quick Step and perhaps in the Paso-Doble.

Fred Astaire? Neither present in body nor in spirit.

Saw Matchstick Men last night at Cinema Paradiso. Nicolas Cage is good as a phobia-addled con artist . His life goes awry when Cage's teenage daughter (Alison Lohman) shows up. Alison Lohman is very good as a 14 year old. B+


Look, I want a movie that's free of anecdote and cheap sentiment. This wasn't it. Most films today just can't take me over the wall and into the world of real emotions or beauty or honesty.

I can't breathe anymore. The sterile atmosphere around me has become irrespirable. I need beauty, art, emotion. That's my oxygen. And no one around me understands. People around here equate going to restuarants with living. They fail to know that they are engaged in a desperate search for life. But restuarants and TV aren't life. And talking about restaurants and food coupons isn't conversation either.

Gad.

PPPoE what is it? Why does it hate me? What did I do to make it disappear? How can I get it back? I always lose the one that I need the most. Come back PPPoE what ever you are.

Dick Robinson's American Standards by the Sea