Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Friday, July 18, 2014
South America 1975
In the basement, in a big box at the bottom of a pile of big boxes, I found several reels of slides, pre-digital dinosaurs from my past. Best of all were 2 reels of pictures taken on a trip to South America that Nonna and I made in the winter of 1975 - the winter in Oregon that is. We were so young, so naive, so happy.
One of my favorite pictures shows Nonnie in our hotel room in Rio. The room is classical 70’s modern, the view out the window is stunning, and she looks great. The picture fills me with a sense of happiness and optimism; I felt that anything was possible, that my whole life was just beginning, that it was going to be a great life, an interesting and exciting life. In twelve hours I had gone from the snow of Oregon to the sun of Brazil, and I had done it with the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, although I may have been a little slow to realize it.
Another picture shows Nonnie at the top of Sugar Loaf mountain overlooking the beach in Rio. She is looking directly at the camera, that is at me, and I remember thinking how lucky I was at that moment.
The next stop was Iguacu Falls, which was a tropical paradise, full of incredible water falls, rivers, jungle, and parrots. We took a little rowboat out to the edge of the falls, on one side of the tiny dock the water was still while on the other side it plunged over a waterfall, a hundred feet down. The guy rowing obviously knew which side to take.
Then came Buenos Aires, a huge city where we stayed in a hotel with armed security officers outside our hotel room door, where the peso was devalued by 50% overnight, ruining the dreams of many of the locals. We ate huge steaks and watched an outdoor play.
Then we flew to Lima, and ate one of the best meals of my life, in a neighborhood restaurant suggested in a tour book. We didn’t speak Spanish and they didn’t speak English, and there weren’t any other tourists there, but we managed to get the biggest, and best, shrimp stuffed avocado ever, plus lots of ceviche, and grilled fish, and a wonderful bottle of wine. A memorable feast.
After Lima we went to Cuzco, and Machu Picchu, where we climbed a local hill to get a stunning view of the ruins below. One picture shows Nonnie climbing up some almost vertical stairs and the next shows us at the top - at the top of the mountain, at the top of our lives.
There is a sense of exhilaration in these pictures that I had forgotten, a feeling of hopefulness, a sense that we could see forever, and do whatever we wanted with our lives. Of course we had to return to our real lives in Portland, but the feelings were too strong to forget.
One of my favorite pictures shows Nonnie in our hotel room in Rio. The room is classical 70’s modern, the view out the window is stunning, and she looks great. The picture fills me with a sense of happiness and optimism; I felt that anything was possible, that my whole life was just beginning, that it was going to be a great life, an interesting and exciting life. In twelve hours I had gone from the snow of Oregon to the sun of Brazil, and I had done it with the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, although I may have been a little slow to realize it.
Another picture shows Nonnie at the top of Sugar Loaf mountain overlooking the beach in Rio. She is looking directly at the camera, that is at me, and I remember thinking how lucky I was at that moment.
The next stop was Iguacu Falls, which was a tropical paradise, full of incredible water falls, rivers, jungle, and parrots. We took a little rowboat out to the edge of the falls, on one side of the tiny dock the water was still while on the other side it plunged over a waterfall, a hundred feet down. The guy rowing obviously knew which side to take.
Then came Buenos Aires, a huge city where we stayed in a hotel with armed security officers outside our hotel room door, where the peso was devalued by 50% overnight, ruining the dreams of many of the locals. We ate huge steaks and watched an outdoor play.
Then we flew to Lima, and ate one of the best meals of my life, in a neighborhood restaurant suggested in a tour book. We didn’t speak Spanish and they didn’t speak English, and there weren’t any other tourists there, but we managed to get the biggest, and best, shrimp stuffed avocado ever, plus lots of ceviche, and grilled fish, and a wonderful bottle of wine. A memorable feast.
After Lima we went to Cuzco, and Machu Picchu, where we climbed a local hill to get a stunning view of the ruins below. One picture shows Nonnie climbing up some almost vertical stairs and the next shows us at the top - at the top of the mountain, at the top of our lives.
There is a sense of exhilaration in these pictures that I had forgotten, a feeling of hopefulness, a sense that we could see forever, and do whatever we wanted with our lives. Of course we had to return to our real lives in Portland, but the feelings were too strong to forget.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
My Struggle
The critics love it; “Perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our time,” but after reading Book 1 (of 6) of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard I have to admit that I am not quite that enthused; I liked it; I didn’t love it. And if it is the book of this century, then it joins Ulysses, the book of the last century, as one of those books that only the critics and intellectuals love. How many common people have read Joyce’s masterpiece, and how many understood it, let alone enjoyed it?
Still, there are parts of Book 1 that are brilliant, moments when the reader is in the mind of the writer, sharing all his thoughts, a kind of intellectual intimacy that is both uncomfortable and exhilarating. The book is described as an autobiographical novel, implying that it is fictional, but what is most likable in this book is its brutal honesty. Now I’m about to start Book Two: A Man in Love. I’ll keep you posted.
I just finished reading The Age of Iron by JM Coetzee, an earlier work by one of my favorite authors. It describes the last days of a woman in South Africa dying of cancer in the time of the last days of the white government, its doctrine of apartheid itself a type of cancer of the people of that country. It is a forceful angry insightful book, as staggering as it is depressing.
Still, there are parts of Book 1 that are brilliant, moments when the reader is in the mind of the writer, sharing all his thoughts, a kind of intellectual intimacy that is both uncomfortable and exhilarating. The book is described as an autobiographical novel, implying that it is fictional, but what is most likable in this book is its brutal honesty. Now I’m about to start Book Two: A Man in Love. I’ll keep you posted.
I just finished reading The Age of Iron by JM Coetzee, an earlier work by one of my favorite authors. It describes the last days of a woman in South Africa dying of cancer in the time of the last days of the white government, its doctrine of apartheid itself a type of cancer of the people of that country. It is a forceful angry insightful book, as staggering as it is depressing.
Friday, July 4, 2014
The Fifth Year
Four years ago I - we - started our five year plan, to live our lives as if we had only five years left to live, as if every day was precious. We started with a train trip from New Mexico to Oregon to New York, then a trans-Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2, then a rental car trip from Southampton to Crail, where we lived for a year in a three hundred year old house on the harbor.
Crail was great, the perfect little seaside village, and from there we explored the rest of Scotland and parts of England, and when we weren’t traveling we were reading, writing, hiking, and taking classes online and in St Andrews, classes in writing, film, and history.
But, as they say, life happens. Nonnie’s dad was hospitalized repeatedly in Oklahoma. Colin and Sarah had a son, Oran. So, instead of moving to Hong Kong as we had planned, we moved back to Albuquerque, and helped move Nonnie’s dad to San Antonio. We spent lots of time with our new grandson and his parents, and with our other son Derek, including many memorable days and nights in our cabin in the hills south of Chama. Then Derek died, and our world dimmed, and so much hope and love and joy was lost.
A year ago Colin, Sarah, and Oran moved to Seattle to start new jobs, and a new life.
We followed, and now we live in a rental house in the University District and Colin and Sarah are buying a house in north Seattle, a 3 bedroom mid-century modern home with a large fenced back yard.
The fifth and final year of our five year plan is beginning and there is no chance at this time of us moving to Hong Kong as we once planned, and life suddenly seems so finite, so limited, as if every day is valuable, and I feel bad when I waste days, as I often do.
My Parkinson’s Disease is there, like a dark shadow, stalking me, taunting me, frightening me. But fear motivates, and when we are afraid we are alive. Life to me seems ephemeral, un-solid, unpredictable, uncaring, unkind.
The question I struggle with everyday is simple, “what next”, but the answer is anything but simple, in fact it is frustrating in its complexity and terrifying in its importance.
Kindness matters. But what is a kind life, how can I be kind, can I plan kindness, can I change my character at my age?
In the coming years compromise will have to do, compromise in the sense that no one can live a perfect life, no one can be in multiple places at the same time. I can’t be with the family I love in Seattle while I am hiking in the highlands of Scotland, or riding the Star ferry in Hong Kong. Likewise I can’t visit my stepmother and my aunt in Oregon, both in their nineties, while I am working in New Mexico or visiting our projects in Thailand. It’s impossible.
Maybe my life is now like an extensive menu in a Chinese restaurant, with week long choices, and I need only to plan and choose, arranging the weeks in a pleasing order. I want my next year to be interesting and also helpful to others well as to myself. I want to be kind.
Last night I read this quote in a book by JM Coetzee: “…like sitting in front of a clock all day, killing the seconds as they emerged, counting one’s life away.”
That I want to avoid at all costs.
So let the fifth year begin!
Crail was great, the perfect little seaside village, and from there we explored the rest of Scotland and parts of England, and when we weren’t traveling we were reading, writing, hiking, and taking classes online and in St Andrews, classes in writing, film, and history.
But, as they say, life happens. Nonnie’s dad was hospitalized repeatedly in Oklahoma. Colin and Sarah had a son, Oran. So, instead of moving to Hong Kong as we had planned, we moved back to Albuquerque, and helped move Nonnie’s dad to San Antonio. We spent lots of time with our new grandson and his parents, and with our other son Derek, including many memorable days and nights in our cabin in the hills south of Chama. Then Derek died, and our world dimmed, and so much hope and love and joy was lost.
A year ago Colin, Sarah, and Oran moved to Seattle to start new jobs, and a new life.
We followed, and now we live in a rental house in the University District and Colin and Sarah are buying a house in north Seattle, a 3 bedroom mid-century modern home with a large fenced back yard.
The fifth and final year of our five year plan is beginning and there is no chance at this time of us moving to Hong Kong as we once planned, and life suddenly seems so finite, so limited, as if every day is valuable, and I feel bad when I waste days, as I often do.
My Parkinson’s Disease is there, like a dark shadow, stalking me, taunting me, frightening me. But fear motivates, and when we are afraid we are alive. Life to me seems ephemeral, un-solid, unpredictable, uncaring, unkind.
The question I struggle with everyday is simple, “what next”, but the answer is anything but simple, in fact it is frustrating in its complexity and terrifying in its importance.
Kindness matters. But what is a kind life, how can I be kind, can I plan kindness, can I change my character at my age?
In the coming years compromise will have to do, compromise in the sense that no one can live a perfect life, no one can be in multiple places at the same time. I can’t be with the family I love in Seattle while I am hiking in the highlands of Scotland, or riding the Star ferry in Hong Kong. Likewise I can’t visit my stepmother and my aunt in Oregon, both in their nineties, while I am working in New Mexico or visiting our projects in Thailand. It’s impossible.
Maybe my life is now like an extensive menu in a Chinese restaurant, with week long choices, and I need only to plan and choose, arranging the weeks in a pleasing order. I want my next year to be interesting and also helpful to others well as to myself. I want to be kind.
Last night I read this quote in a book by JM Coetzee: “…like sitting in front of a clock all day, killing the seconds as they emerged, counting one’s life away.”
That I want to avoid at all costs.
So let the fifth year begin!
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
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