You Know What They Say...

                                             You told me something wrong.

                                             I know I listen too long,

                                             But then one thing leads to another.
                                             One thing leads to another.

                                                                       --The Fixx, from Reach the Beach, 1983

They say that with age comes wisdom, but in my case age mostly comes with a grumpy old guy who thinks he knows stuff. After further consideration I have reduced the stuff I do know to six things. (Almost everything else belongs on a list titled Stuff I’m Pretty Sure About and the rest is on Stuff I’m Still Working On.)

• There is no “they”
• We all have the same amount of time
• People see what they’re looking for
• Thoughts fly
• Everything is connected
• You reap what you sow

You know what they say… The next time these words leave your brain and approach your mouth try to remember that there is no they. Maybe you heard something or read something or believe something, but whichever it is, they didn’t say it. I have come to believe that saying that they say something is a veiled attempt to give credibility to the next thing you are about to say. Either you know the source or you don’t; hell, maybe you just think it, but in any case leave they out of it.

The next time someone says “I didn’t have time” (as in I didn’t have time to do my homework or I didn’t have time to eat…) do what I do. Remind them that we all have the same amount of time. Exactly the same amount. Like me, ask them if they have more or less than 24 hours every day. Here’s the point: saying “I don’t have time” is code for “I don’t have priorities.” Things pile up. I get that. Some things are left undone. I get that, too--hey, if you did one thing, you didn’t do everything else--but don’t blame time.

People see what they are looking for (and they generally ignore the rest). I had a dog years ago that eventually bit everyone except me. She was the sweetest animal that ever lived. Conversely, the next time that you convince yourself you can’t find something, you’ll make sure you’re right. Next Christmas when you can’t find the scotch tape, the same scotch tape you will have used for the last hour, only to discover it right in front of you, you’ll know I'm right. But don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. Millions of people see Hillary Clinton as an honest, law-abiding person, highly qualified to be President of the United States.

Thoughts fly, and don’t try to tell me they don’t. You have even said it from time-to-time. “Holy Cow! Hello! I was just thinking about you.” Or maybe, “I’m glad you called me because I was going to call you later.” Perhaps, like me, you’ve reached for the telephone before it rang. Or perhaps you’ve dialed a number only to be met with inexplicable silence until the person on the other end who is just as confused says, “Wait, what? I was trying to call you!” That’s because thoughts fly. I’m guessing that established patterns of thinking and behavior have more to do with this phenomenon that the physics of radio-kinetic brain waves travelling through time and space, but I just say “thoughts fly.”

I am on record regarding the connectivity of life. (By now you realize that even if no connection exists, I’d invent one…) Speaking of connections, by now, if they are still reading, my friends and ex-colleagues have waited long enough to wonder why my all-time, unquestionably preeminent co-rules in life have not made the list. I used to say there are only two rules in life: “Be where you’re supposed to be, and do what you’re supposed to do.” I have said these words more often and to more people (mostly ones carrying school books) than any other single Thannerism--by far. You might even have believed that if I were to claim to know one thing for sure, this is it. Well, I have breaking news…

I am no longer convinced. Nowadays I am convinced that these are not the only two rules. Oh hold on, I still believe them, but even though it seems like there are more than two rules, or should be more than two, or could be more, I now realize, there is actually only one rule: There are no rules. 

Everyone is free to operate as they darn well choose. Same sex marriage. Cursing in public. Ending sentences with prepositions...doesn’t matter. You love your partner; right? Get married. Heck, you might as well make out in public just to prove things. If you live in the USA, go ahead and curse at police. No rules against that, Ole Hoss. You know all them good swear words, so by all means, use them.  You might even get to file a lawsuit when one of them finally loses composure and cracks your head open. No rules, not even those pertaining to civility. To decency. To common courtesy. And best of all you can end your sentences with any words you think of.

Earlier this month when Debbie realized the date was my college roommate’s birthday, I sent a message via his wife, whom I found on FaceBook. After I asked her to pass along a birthday wish to my old friend, I watched a few videos she had posted. Apparently she is a proud member of her church's congregation, and her videos are joyous expressions of (as she calls them) “unashamed” Christian faith. Although I do not share her enthusiasm or conviction I do try to understand the mentality that encourages, allows and even demands such commitment.

Just one day prior to that, I struggled while trying to understand the religious conviction that encourages, allows, and even demands the murder of commuters (or tourists or diners or theater goers or market shoppers or innocents of every sort). I sometimes think that I want to understand, but I know I can’t. I realize that I will never understand and to be candid, I really don’t want to understand because I don’t want to come anywhere near the inclination to justify the mutilation of people who were where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to be doing, and who never even knew they were in danger.

A few days before that Salah Abdeslam, one of the religious zealots who massacred people in Paris weeks ago, was captured in Brussels. Before authorities had time to stop the retaliation of three of his henchmen, bombs were detonated in two locations killing 30 people and injuring 200. Either the police didn’t have enough time, or like so many apologists world-wide, they were unwilling to accuse for fear of offending a religious community; I think in large part, because despite the evidence, we want to see Islam as the antithesis of the violent image conveyed by murderers who are Muslim. Today, I wonder if the families of the slain feel that way. Wait...no I don’t.

This leads me directly to the last thing I know from my list: You reap what you sow. I didn’t have to invent this one. It was expressed to me many, many times in a variety of forms during the 45 years I knew my mother.  I was reminded countless times that “what goes around comes around”. She’d also say, “You just wait, Mister. You’ll get yours!” or things like “It’ll come back to you in spades.” Maybe the best one of all was “There’ll be hell to pay, or at least there should be.”

In this case, I hope so. They say that one thing leads to another. I also hope that’s true.

By mid-afternoon that day the first email from home was asking about our welfare, but not from our family. They didn’t have to, and I mean that sincerely. They knew we don’t live in Brussels, and they didn’t have to ask how their mother was because they knew I would have already told them if there was anything to tell. Apart from that, they knew exactly how I am--incensed.  They know not because thoughts fly but because they know me. They know I am not afraid, at least not for our safety. They know what I really fear is that it won’t stop. It might never stop.

They also know that what I really want is the Hell part of “Hell to pay.” 

Let’s Not Get Carried Away (or we just might)

                                             You’re the blessed,

                                             We’re the spiders from Mars…

                                                      —David Bowie, Hang on to Yourself

I have the habit (or more of an inclination) to look for and then find the connectivity in things—especially among the things that happen to me and for me. I have enough evidence to convince myself that absolutely everything happens for good reason; and better yet, absolutely everything happens the way it happens for even better ones.

Our European lifestyle is in some ways better and in at least one huge way worse (insert grandchildren here) than our lifestyle in America. It might be safer to just say the lifestyle is different. Let me explain. In one big way it’s better for us because no longer is television our daily domestic soundtrack. As much as I would welcome that, Dutch television is impossible to understand and although there is nothing inherently wrong with the BBC, let’s just say that small doses suffice. In its place I have substituted a combination of Facebook, news apps, 100! Puzzle, and the business end of the pen I used to write this. OK, OK there’s work and travel and plenty of bike rides and bus and metro rides and long daggone walks to get anywhere, but let’s just say the lifestyle is different.

I spend a whole lot more time just thinking. I’m serious about that, but I must admit that I’m all over the place, really. With the focus of a kitten trying to catch a laser light I seem to go from one thing to the next, but repeatedly and consistently I seem always to look for the connectedness of everything.

Like a magnificent spider web, I want to see how everything, absolutely everything, is interconnected and supportive of everything else. And just like pulling at the strands of a real spider’s web, I’ve convinced myself that damaging one strand doesn’t necessarily destroy the integrity of its entirety. It certainly affects it, yeah, but by the same token, the “damage” becomes part of the design going forward.

All that to say this: I think what happens matters less than the knowledge that everything, no matter what, is connected; and as importantly, everything contributes.

 

Recently Gwaz and I visited the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam to attend a traveling exhibit dedicated to the singer, Amy Winehouse. Although her self-destructive lifestyle, addiction, and death were conspicuously absent, it was impossible to ignore the impetus for such an exhibit to begin with. Surely, I wasn’t the only person there who thought what a shame her death was. In fact, only the oddest among us would be the one who didn’t.

As I walked along the exhibit looking at her stuff—dresses, shoes, record albums, primary school tie and jumper (what the Brits call a sweater) I thought of a day in 2012 when I interrupted our son, Jesse sitting alone in his dimly lit cellar, apparently doing nothing more than listening.  The same guy who can quote chapter and verse the particulars of popular music from rock and roll to hip-hop, can name the original members of NWA, and teaches his two-year old daughter the significance of Metallica, was listening to Amy’s pure jazz. We agreed then as we certainly would have last week what a shame it was that she is gone. What I didn’t know then was that that very moment would return to me years later.

It’s as if I have trained myself to reach for the connections, to look for them, to make sure I realize them. Later that day but right on cue, (don’t tell me thoughts don’t fly) Jesse sent me a vintage recording of Duane Allman and Boz Scaggs. Jesse sends me music and references to musicians all the time. He doesn’t ever explain, but I never need to know why. I can always tell the reference, and no matter what the context it is as if to remind me to appreciate what we have instead of what we lost. And, always I want to see the connection to what has come before.

This one wasn’t even a stretch.

Thanks to Bowie, I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. (Not my own so much, although as Ruthie used to say, there are only two things you can’t avoid and the other one is taxes.) On the day I learned that Bowie had died, I was sitting at my desk at school in the early morning. By the end of the day students were asking me if I had heard. I wonder if they will remember that day like I remember a September school day in 1970 when I learned that Jimi Hendrix was dead, or Janis Joplin, or Jim Morrison, or the sound of Howard Cosell’s voice on Monday Night Football December 8, 1980 when he delivered devastating, unimaginable news.

Listening to “Sky Dog” and thinking about Amy made it all come flooding back. Like so many others, Allman died too soon in 1971, and as I sat there thinking, naturally focusing on what was lost and who we’ve lost including Maurice White, Paul Kantner, Glenn Frey, Lemmy Kilmister, BB King, Allen Toussaint, Ben E. King, Chris Squire, and of course, Bowie, I almost couldn’t help but visualize my own magnificent spider web, constructed in ineffably equal parts—sustained by the acceptance of loss and gratitude for the contributions that endure.