A Sense of Wonder

 

The scientist Rachel Carson eloquently reminded us that “If a child is to keep alive her inborn sense of wonder, she needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with her the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”

 

Note that she suggests that if we are to gift the children with the inheritance they deserve. we adults need to keep that alive in ourselves, restore “awe” to its proper meaning in our own lives. Today I felt my own sense of wonder wholly restored gazing at the cave paintings in the Lascaux caves. 

 

To feel communion with our ancestors, so artfully and reverently expressed in these remarkable paintings, is an extraordinary experience—especially considering they lived 21,000 years ago! It was the beginning of Homo Sapiens, people that looked and perhaps felt and thought like us. One might ask, “With such a promising beginning, what happened to us?!!” 

 

Yesterday, the engravings in the cave we visited were impressive, but not easy to see and fairly subtle. But these cave paintings, many in color using manganese and ochre on calcite, perfectly preserved over these many thousands of years, were simply astonishing in their size, detail, overlapping images and sheer artistry. We went to two different sites, both actually replicas of the originals to save them from tourist wear and tear. But the painstaking details the restorers went through is an astonishment in and of itself. Our two guides were both knowledgeable and charming and the story of the cave’s discovery was yet another miracle. (Not to be told here.)

 

All of this made yet more memorable by a beautiful two-hour bike ride there and another equally lovely two-hour bike ride back to the town of Eyzies. A delightful and delicious pizza dinner outdoors, that included a Caesar salad served in a crust and a remarkable chocolate ice cream for dessert that cost all of two Euros. For those curious, the prices in general here are a welcome change from the minimum $15 sandwich of any kind in the U.S., I bought a little quiche for lunch that was more than enough for the equivalent of  $3.50. 

 

But away from the mundane and back to the miracles. This traveler is grateful to have witnessed and remembered what I felt as a child—there indeed is magic and mystery in this marvelous world. Not only in the hidden caves under the earth, but in the hidden depths of our own being. May it rise up!

 

PS A few photos from Lascaux:

 

  

Life Abundant

There is no finer feeling than coasting on a country road while the world is waking up. The smell of early morning in the air, the birds singing the day in. Two horses in the field run together simply for the joy of it, the cottonweed trees dance in the breeze, the verdant wild grasses on the side of the road bow as we pass. Here is Life, in all its full splendor! The simple wonder of being alive, moving, breathing, feeling, dreaming. It is enough. It is more than enough. It is everything. 

 

Of course, the death-dealers are everywhere. The ones who wake up in the morning thinking, "Who can I hurt today? " Alongside those who squander life, fill it with mere distraction, drug it up or drug it down, refuse to praise or bless or to own their joy, walk through their incarnation like zombies, enclose their hearts in locked chests, let the brainwashers control their minds. “Away with them!” I long to say, but you see how their toxic omnipresence in the air enters my lungs and threatens to darken everything. 

 

But on a morning bike riding through the French countryside, they are whooshed away in the wind. (It’s only when I sit down later to write that they pull up a chair.) The glory of it all stayed with us for the full four hours and almost 40 miles of riding, ending at the Grotto of the Combarelles, one of the local caves that tells us that people like us, yearning to express themselves in images still preserved lived some 15,000 years ago. We witnessed their extraordinary praise of horses, bison, reindeer, a lion, a fish and more etched into the cave walls.

 

By now it was late afternoon and just enough time to dive into the hotel’s perfect temperature (77 Fahrenheit) swimming pool in a luxuriant yard and garden. And then into our evening dress for another 3-course feast.  Life abundant and I cherish it all. 

True Retirement

Beginning by reading Walden as an impressionable teen and continuing into my college investigation of yoga and Zen, I began to organize my life hoping to find “the peace that passeth all understanding.” 50 years later, I think it has finally arrived. 

 

It’s the end of our first day of actual biking through the lovely Dordogne Region countryside. We arrived at a hotel with a lovely (but too cold!) pool, a wandering cat, a couple of friendly ponies and a countryside quiet that has entered every cell of my body. One of those rare moments where the inside and the outside are in perfect equilibrium. The temperature neither demands bundling up from the cold nor seeking relief from the heat. The silence is pure, not a single human sound or passing car or chainsaw, just the gentle murmur of the water in the pool, a quiet whoosh from a small breeze and the punctuations of birds far and near. 

 

My body knows no pain, demands no attention, my mind is stilled, my heart is overflowing with the blessing of tranquility. There is no driving desire to possess this, to make it last forever, to change my life. And yet I can’t help but think: What if I truly retired? Just spent my days wrapped in this leisure and quiet? Get off of Facebook, check e-mail once a week or once a month. Stop watching Warriors' games or caring if they win. Hand over my Pentatonic Press to someone else, get off of the two Boards I'm President of, give up directing the summer Orff Course. Move to France and get a piano brought in, build a little library of books. Keep writing not to convince anyone of a single thing but just to praise and notice and use words as envoys of blessings. Stop trying to heal or change this hopelessly broken world, stop feeling the outrage and the powerlessness. Let go of my need to incessantly speak out against the insanity and cruelty and horrible ignorance of it all. 

 

What would it be like to accept that I’ve done what I could? It was so far from enough, but hopefully brought little sparks of joy and happiness to others here and there and perhaps that’s all I should have expected. What might it be like to retire as they have done in India, fully leave one’s work wholly behind and just go off into the woods (or the French country estate) and savor each and every minute of my remaining time? To stop moving around so much? To let go the long documenting of my life and give away the books and records and workshop notes and basement full of saved nostalgia. To relinquish my memberships to the various groups and (gasp!), stop going to and giving Orff workshops. Just me and the cat and the ponies and the trees and the quiet and the pool (maybe get it heated?). Just wondering.

 

At the moment, it’s a most delicious and appealing thought.  

The French Connection: Part III

My little story below is drawn from some 25,00 to 80,000 English words of French origin. 

I found a Website with a list, but with about 1,000 words per letter, couldn’t get past C in one sitting. (Hence, the preponderance of ABC words below, with a few others thrown in.) All italic words below are derived from French. Enjoy!

 

Last Autumn, some 30 years after commencement, my old college companions decided to rendezvous in New Orleans for a reunion. If you looked at our dossiers, you would find that one was an architect from Vermont, one an avant-garde artist from San Francisco, one an attorney from Chicago who was also a wine connoisseur, one an au pair from Des Moines, one an agile accomplished acrobat from Delaware and the last a bourgeois aristocrat from Baton Rouge, who had his chauffeur drive him in his limousine to the café  where we met for croissants, crepes and beignets. 

Besides the professional accomplishmentsof my acquaintances, it was both amusing and amazing to note how different we had become from when we knew each other as older adolescents. One was a celibate bachelor who abstained from sex and liquor, another an ambitious entrepreneur with a big appetite for the finer things in life, one an amateur author who had taken up crocheting, one an adventurer who also had many adulterous affairs. Another was a chauvinist who provoked many arguments praising the conservative government and predicting the downfall of civilization from subversive pacifist  liberals, spouting clichés he had learned from Fox News. 

 

“Don’t be absurd!” some admonished him. “Those people are illiterate charlatans. Stop being a bigoted baboon, a seditious scoundrel and a clueless capitalist!”  Another advised that we not sabotage the comradery with such stupid skirmishes and that helped appease the situation. We admitted that we had made a faux-pas and agreed that talking politics was poisonous and we should abstain. Or otherwise, hire a chaperone.

 

After the café we sauntered down the boulevard, encountered a detour and maneuvered around some debris and made our way to a fancy restaurant at the end of a cul-de-sac. There we were treated to a sumptuous banquet: beef tartare, quiche lorraine, coq au vin, vichyssoise, ratatouille, soufflé, jambalaya, creme brûlée. Quite a cuisine! The artist and the acrobat, not part of the nouveau riche, preferred to order a la carte. With the champagne and bourbon and a carafe of Cabernet flowing, things loosened up. 

 

After dinner, we considered going to a séance or play billiards or go to a film noir festival or gamble playing roulette, but instead decided to go to a chic jazz club because the restaurant had offered us some coupons for a cheaper price and there was only a short queue to get in.  We were particularly enchanted by one chanteuse who just had a certain je ne sais quoi. She knew our acrobat friend and at her supplication, they performed a Vaudeville routine together that ended in a spectacular somersault. It was the piece de resistance of the evening. 

 

We all agreed we should meet again and Voila! everyone took out their phones to check their calendars. But by the end, we couldn’t agree on a date. Oh well.  Ce la vie!

  

Language Matters

Words matter. Or at least they used to. Not only in political discourse, honest journalism and proper education, but apparently, they once were a vital part of wooing one’s future love. At least according to Cyrano de Bergerac, that inspired poet whose large nose made courting actual women a challenge. So he offered his talents to his dull-witted friend Christian and seduced Roxanne into falling in love with him (Christian), both speaking hidden under her balcony and writing her letter after letter.  Without giving too much away, she thinks she’s in love with the man but in reality is in love with the person who could speak such an eloquent love-language. 

 

We went to an interesting presentation of this play in the perfect place —Bergerac!! Then took a lovely boat ride on the town’s river in perfect temperature. Strolled back to the hotel peeking into the various stores with their beautiful wooden toys, hand-crafted kitchen ware, affordable luxuriant wine and of course, an afternoon ice cream. Took a cold plunge into the swimming pool, sipped the wine and met with the organizers of our bike tour to meet our bikes and get everything ready for the first day of riding tomorrow. 

 

Earlier in the day, we went to a Farmer’s Market, always so heartening to wander between the booths with the fresh fruits and vegetables, breads and pastries, cheeses, nougat, 15 different kinds of honey and more. We bought some bread, cheese and tomatoes for a picnic lunch. But first walked past the kora harp player from Senegal playing his fabulous music in front of the church and then entered the church serenaded by the organ. Between the instrument that I first studied when I was six years old and the cathedral feeling that brought me back to that most marvelous first trip to Europe with my college chorus, it was like crossing several bridges back to my younger years and each one reminding me of those magical landscapes. 

 

Dinner awaits. Stay tuned for another look at the power of language in The French Connection III that will look at just some of the thousands of words we use in English that are of French origin. Look forward to seeing you at that rendezvous. But first a walk past the carousel on the way to the restaurant hoping for some tasty hors d’oeuvres suggested by the maître d. Maybe a soufflé?

The Usefulness of Beauty

“You are always eager to make everything useful, yet here is a useless plot. It would be much better to have salads here than boquets.”

 

…the bishop replied, “You are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps more so.”

 

-       Victor Hugo: Les Miserables

 

Just as we know something is rotten in the state of Denmark from the smell of it, so do we know something is glorious in the state of France by the feeling in our heart wholly unhampered by pesky doubts of questions. There are always plenty of finger-pointing reasons we can name when we are unhappy or out-of-sorts, but often that deep-seated sensation of pure unadulterated happiness just simply is, neither the need to overly-analyze or any clear cause and effect explanation. 

 

But if I had explain why my step is lighter and my conversations more free-flowing with friends or strangers on trains or why I’m feeling like I’m crossing back over some bridge to my childhood contentment (un-adulterated), I could name a few. 

 

Simplest is that I more or less jumped through all those irritating, exasperating, frustrating and sometimes downright maddening hoops I had to get through to come out of the other side to the leisure of “vacation.” Nothing much to do for a couple of days but wander and wonder. 

 

But the greater uplift I believe comes from the sensation I often have in Europe. That soaking-in of the charm of the architecture, the cleanliness of the streets, the attention to well-cooked food, the human-scale of small buildings,  some car-less streets and many parks. In general, the attention to beauty, to quality of life over sheer quantity, of long lunch breaks, long dinners with friends and family, stimulating talks about art and literature and language and history from well-educated people who know so much and are so interested in learning more. 

 

By contrast, the American mentality has long reduced everything to dollars and preferred efficiency and usefulness to beauty, quantity of life to quality of life, fast over slow, surface over deep, now over lasting and all of that manifests in a landscape of extraordinary natural beauty being littered with billboards and shopping malls and highways with fast food chains at rest-stops. Ugliness is okay as long as the goods are cheap, reading is reduced to sound-bytes and stock reports and magazines about celebrity’s lives. Just today I got an e-mail sent through my Website urging me to “turn my interest into income.” No thank you. 

 

Well, there’s a sure-fire way to darken my happiness! Bring up my deep disappointment and sadness in the way my country has been willing to sell its soul to the devil of usefulness and efficiency and distraction and get-rich-quick schemes. So let’s cork up that malevolent genie back in the bottle and return to the grace of happiness restored. 

 

The day began in Paris with a quiche and coffee breakfast eaten outdoors in lovely weather, watching the Parisians pass by on their way to work or school at a leisurely pace, no frantic edge to it. We walked to the train station and boarded the bullet train south. Truth be told, the increased speed was useful and efficient, but I missed the more pleasurable sensation of a slower trip through the countryside. But thoroughly enjoyed the spontaneous conversation with an Australian couple around our age who were also heading to a short bike trip. 

 

The second train to Bergerac was a more conventional speed and began with a woman sitting across from our friends Dennis and Gerry who suddenly put on some music and said to Dennis, “Let’s dance!!!” And after continuing to insist after he politely declined, he finally did! A short minute, but hey, that doesn’t happen every day on train rides! She then went to talk with Gerry (in French) about her challenges being an Arabic woman in modern day French society. 

 

From the train to the hotel and out to wonder this charming city. I believe that’s when my happiness started to rise, soaking in the loveliness of it all. Stopped for an afternoon ice cream, peeked into a shop window with delightful wooden toys for children, another with handcrafted items including wooden spoons which Dennis convinced me to buy because I loved their sound playing them as a musical instrument, walked along the river a bit, sat down for a late afternoon glass of wine (we’re in France, after all) and then continued on to a delicious Vietnamese dinner where I taught my other six companions the cork trick (too hard to explain here), much to everyone’s delight. 

One of the store windows had these picnic baskets and they captured everything I’m trying to express here about paying attention to the fine things in life.  The exquisite woven baskets, the carefully-made places for real silverware, wine glasses, bottle openers, plates and more. No paper plates or plastic spoons and forks or take-out fast food in styrofoam containers. Things carefully and artfully made and long-enough lunch hours or leisurely weekend to take them out and lay out a tablecloth on a picnic table alongside the river with home-cooked food, fresh bread, fresh fruits and vegetables and of course, some wine or Perrier sparkling water. 

So as that marvelous French author Victor Hugo said above:

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful… Perhaps more so.”

 

At the very least, it makes me happy. 

  

The French Connection: Part II

THE FRENCH CONNECTION: Part II

 

Philosophers

Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Foucault

 

Scientists

Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie,  Jean Itard (physician who worked with the Wild Child), Jacques Costeau

 

Historical Figures

Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, Champlain,  Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, Marquis de Sade, Tocqueville, Lafayette, Charles de Gaulle

Fashion Designers

Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves St. Laurent

 

Common words with “French”

French fries, French toast, French braid, French poodle, French roast (coffee), French kissing 

The French Connection

Well, it worked. The plane brought four of us as promised to Paris, we met our two other riding companions who came on a different flight and got into a van to take us into the city. An enthusiastic grey-goateed driver who talked non-stop (one of us actually speaks French!) as we passed the various sights— the Arc  d-Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the statue of Louis Pasteur, the flame sculpture honoring Diana and yet more. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the hotel rooms were ready and having hardly slept a wink on the 10-hour flight, I lay down in exhausted bliss and slept until my alarm woke me at 5.

 

The six of us met in the lobby (and there’s one more who came early who we’ll meet up with tomorrow) and wandered the neighborhood keeping an eye out for restaurants. Perfect temperature, the streets a-buzz with young people, kids bouncing on the playground trampoline, the iconic cafes with the small outdoor tables and cane chairs with people chatting, smoking, sipping coffee or wine. We sat down at one such place and while eating our first meal—and a promising one at that with a unique eggplant dish, gazpacho, calamari and such— I proposed a little game. Without looking a single thing up on our phones, what did we know about France and what were our associations with it? I suggested we do it by categories and here’s a first-draft list:

 

Children’s Books

The Red Ballon, Eloise, Madeline, Babar, the Little Prince. Tin-Tin. 

 

Literature (authors and select books)

Moliere—Tartuffe, Voltaire- Candide, Alexander Dumas- The Three Musketeers/ The Count of Monte Cristo, Victor Hugo- Les Miserables, Stendhal-The Red and the Black, Emile Zola—Germinal, Balzac—The Human Comedy, Louis Flaubert—Madame Bovary, Marcel Proust- Remembrance of Things Past, Anais Nin—The Diary of Anais Nin, Jean-Paul Sartre—No Exit, Albert Camus—The Stranger, Eugene Ionesco—Rhinoceros.

 

Poetry

Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Valery, Mallarme.

 

Music: Composers

Guillaume Machaut, Guillaume Dufay, Josquin De Pres, Couperin, Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Faure, Bizet, Offenbach, Massenet, Poulenc, Saint Saens, Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Lili Boulanger, Boulez, Messian, Milhaud. 

 

Jazz Musicians

Django Reinhardt, Stefan Grapelli, Martial Solal, Jean-Luc Ponty, Michel Petrucciani, Jacques Loussier

 

Singers/ Songwriters

Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Michel Le Grand, Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour

 

Art 

Monet, Manet, Matisse, Degas, Pisarro, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec, Seurat, Renoir, Rodin, Braque, Gauguin, Duchamp, Rousseau. 

 

Filmmakers

Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Louis Malle, Francis Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Tati

 

Famous Films

Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game, Children of Paradise, Orpheus, Diabolique, The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, The Wild Child, Diva,La Cage aux Folles,  Jean de Florette, Amelie, 

 

Actors and Actresses

Charles Boyer, Yves Montand, Louis Jordan, Capucine, Maurice Chevalier, Leslie Caron, Jean Paul Belmondo, Simone Signoret, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Denueve, Juliet Binoche, Jean Moreau, Gerard Depardieu, Marcel Marceau. 

 

Ex-pat Authors, Musicians, Dancers, Artists Who Lived for a time in Paris 

Statesman: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin Dancers: Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan. Authors:Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, e.e.cummings, Rainer Marie Rilke, James Baldwin Artists: Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Miro, Modigliani Jazz Musicians: James Reese Europe, Sidney Bechet, Cole Porter, Mary Lou Williams, Memphis Slim, Big Joe Turner, Nina Simone, Hazel Scott, Quincy Jones Classical Composers Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Eliot Carter, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla 

 

That’s a mouthful! Quite a contribution to the arts and culture worldwide. And I confess that I cheated a bit with films, actors, actresses and poets once I got WiFi. But most came from the collective memory of the group and kept re-surfacing over the next day. Then new categories came up— philosophers, sports, politicians, food, fashion, cars and more. Stay tuned tomorrow! 

PS One of the movies I saw on the plane? The French Connection!

Small Defeats

Giving gifts to your spouse, siblings, in-laws, children, for Christmas, Hanukkah, birthdays, what have you, is one of those things that drops off your list when you cross 70 years old. Grandchildren, yes, but the rest is no longer an obligation. But still a pleasure when you happen to find something that suits. 

 

I scored big time this December when I got my wife a Burmese Cookbook. We dove in and now we both feel pretty confident, with Tea Leaf Salad, Fiery Tofu, Ginger Shrimp and a host of other appetizing dishes. The perfect gift!

 

I also stumbled into an intriguing book browsing in a bookstore (remember that?) titled Still Life at Eighty by Abigail Thomas. She is an author of other fiction and non-fiction I didn’t know at all, but her short ruminations on turning 80 seemed a timely theme for both my wife and I. (I rarely buy books for family members that I don’t hope to read when they’re done.). It is both a charming, honest and provocative book covering grief, loss, political outrage, gratitude and the indignity of buying Depends. One essay begins like this:

 

“What were you once certain of, my friend asks me, that you can no longer count on?…I don’t have an answer. I was never certain of anything. I was never certain things would work out for the best, or that everything happens for a reason, or that there was a guiding force in my life.…”

 

That struck me, because those three things are exactly what I’ve felt cautiously certain of my whole life. And mostly still do. 

But preparing for my 8 weeks away, I hit some obstacles yesterday. I made a Kinko’s copy of a draft of my new book to take with me, but neglected to reduce the font—and thus, the page numbers— and it feels just a bit too heavy to take with me. I noticed my right hearing aid wasn’t working and happened to be close to one of Kaiser’s locations where the Hearing Clinic is. But they were closed for the weekend. I had gone there the day before to get a Covid booster, but they didn’t give them there anymore and it was too late to get to the other campus. So walking back past Safeway, I decided to get my Covid shot there. The pharmacist asked for my info, noticed I was on the Kaiser health plan and said I’d have to pay for the shot. “No problem,” I said. “How much?”

 

“$200.”

 

WHAT?!!!! So I’m taking my chances. People in Europe, stay away from me if you don’t feel well. And then the Warriors lost after having been ahead most of the game. And to top it off, my dizziness is back.

 

So on the surface, these small defeats could call into question the supposition that everything works out for the best, happens for a reason and there are guardian angels watching over me. But I’m happy to give all three the benefit of the doubt.

 

Off to the airport in an hour. Wish me luck!

Thank Your Mom

I should have posted this yesterday before you (well, your kids) made that egg and pancake breakfast for your mother. Then you or they could have sung it to her while delivering the goods. But hopefully not too late! 

 

Of course, these days our lack of familiarity with old jazz classics means that most people have no idea what the original song is. But at least these days means Youtube is at your fingertips. So no excuse! And if you’re one of these folks who decided to take up the ukelele, look up the chord chart while you’re at it for accompaniment. 

 

As noted in an earlier post, this is pure superficial homage to mothers while we strip them of the right to control their own bodies, continue to pay them less, do absolutely nothing to socially support the essential labor of motherhood and think that a little Hallmark Card and a song is enough. But in the spirit of both/and, take this day to reflect and then have some fun with your Mom. If she is far away in the other world, sing it to her anyway.

 

MOTHER’S DAY SONG (sung to the tune of Five Foot Two)

© 2023 Doug Goodkin

 

1) Five foot two, eyes are blue, 

She taught you how to tie your shoe,

Has anybody thanked their Mom?

 

She’s cooked your meals, soothed your squeals

Always knows just how you feel,

Has anybody thanked their Mom?

 

Now if you run into, a Mom or two

Go up and shake her hand,

Here’s what you do, tell her “Thank you,” say,

“You’re the best Mom in the land.”

 

She likes to play, and each Tuesday,

She drives you to take ballet,

Has anybody thanked their Mom?

 

2) Make her some eggs and pancakes too

And don’t forget, say “I love you!”

Has anybody thanked their Mom?

 

Be extra good, well, you always should

Sing with her and the neighborhood.

Has anybody thanked their Mom?

 

Make her a card, it’s not so hard

You can write a little poem

Clean up your room, you can use your broom,

Help her take care of your home.

 

It’s Mother’s Day, this day in May,

Time to vote for equal pay,

Has anybody thanked their Mom?

 

This and That and the Other Thing

It has not been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon and mostly, happily so. Three dinners and two lunches with different sets of friends, two nights out at a bar watching the Warriors, attending my nephew’s play, writing my new book with fiery inspiration, playing piano at Sequoias Retirement Home and as always, the Jewish Home, singing for a 2^nd grade class at a local school. 

 

Then the list of “to get done before the trip”— shots for Ghana, Covid booster, book hotels in Austria, book flight to Ghana from Europe and home again, haircut, packing and etc.  One more full day to keep pecking away at that list and hoping to board the plane with a great exhale of satisfaction. To give myself over to that “nobody in particular” self I’ve loved my whole life and occasionally get to hang out with. These bike trips (this my 4^th) the perfect vehicle for that fellow. 

 

The temperatures in France promise to be like Portland last week and San Francisco this week—near-perfect 72-degree days. I’ll take it. At the same time, I need to prepare for the occasional chilly morning or rainy day alongside the predictable heat in Ghana. Packing will indeed be a challenge, fitting everything into a carry-on for 8 full weeks of traveling in France, England, Austria and Ghana! Already worried about doing laundry. Wondering if I should really take the four paperback books I have, the possible Kinko’s copy of my new book, my recorder. Raincoat and umbrella? For the first time, deciding to leave the blue jeans and opt for one pair of lighter pants. 

 

So this my little palette-cleanser blog-post, neither the deep introspective thought of Schoenberg’s quotes nor the reports of adventurous travels. Just a little bit of this and a little bit of that, perfectly describing my present state of being. Alongside a faint sense of eight weeks away being so long, especially just as I was feeling better on the piano and on a roll with my writing. 

Then there's the other thing. Of course, I can read the news anywhere I am, but just being miles away from the next five-alarm fire of you-know-who should be a bit of a relief. But if I hear of a rally in Paris or London or Vienna, I will be there!

 

And now, on to packing.

The Limits of Comfort

It’s possible that comfort began its life as a verb, the praiseworthy human instinct to help ease and alleviate another’s suffering and distress. It’s life as a noun grew as the physical conditions of life became less arduous and people grew accustomed to a state of ease, of pleasant living conditions. And as physical ease became the standard of living in both public and private, it was a short leap to insist that any conversation about ideas be comfortable or else we’ll set off “you’re triggering my trauma!” alarm. 

 

Of the three definitions, I’m all in on the first and okay up to a point with the second. I enjoy a nice chair and pleasant weather as much as the next person, but the most memorable moments of my life— running my first cross-country race, sitting meditation with crossed legs for some 15 hours a day, seven days in a row at a Zen Center, Day 2 of the Macchu Picchu hike at 61 years old, backpacking with my daughter and granddaughter at 70 years old eating meals sitting on hard granite—were as far from comfortable as possible. And thus forever remembered. 

 

But it's the third obsession with comfort of all kinds— physical, emotional, intellectual— and at all costs, that worries me greatly. Everybody, be they to the left or the right of the political spectrum, seems to be jumping on that bandwagon. Trust me,  the wheels are rickety and the band’s music is bad. 

 

As far back as 1911, the composer Arnold Schoenberg was already worried about such things. In the Preface to his book Theory of Harmony, he writes:

Our age seeks many things. What is has found, however, is above all: comfort. Comfort, with all its implications, intrudes even into the world of ideas and makes us far more content that we ever should be. We understand better than ever today how to make life pleasant. We solve problems to remove an unpleasantness. But, how do we solve them? And what presumption, to think we have really solved them! Here we can see most distinctly what the prerequisite of comfort is; superficiality.

 

Comfort as a philosophy of life! The least possible commotion, nothing shocking.

 

Yet the first task of the teacher is to shake up the pupil thoroughly. The teacher’s own unrest must infect the students.’

 

The poet Miguel de Unamuno agrees: 

 

“My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread; I'm selling yeast.”

The sociological studies, first-hand reports from teachers and testimony of kids themselves reveal a picture of students of all ages who lack resilience, courage, drive, determination. They want their learning style served on a platter, their neurodivergent needs catered to, 

their fragile emotions coddled. 

I believe in all of the above—up to a point. I call it the 50-yard line, where I do my part to understand their needs and they do their part to step up to work through their challenges. That’s where we meet. But if one of us has to move further down the field, I prefer it to be the student. I’ll only teach them for a year or more, but they’re the ones who need to cultivate their lifetime learning habits and develop the strength, resilience, determination to meet life’s inevitable storms head-on. 

The excessive coddling teachers are being encouraged to offer does exactly no one any good. Especially in these days where public policy is shaping itself around not disturbing the children. God forbid that they’re uncomfortable learning what people of one skin color have done to the other, when people of one gender have done to the other, what people of one privileged class have done to the other. If no unrest is set in motion, no shaking up happening in the lesson, no sense of disturbance or agitation, education is mere baby-sitting and mindless entertainment.

 

So to re-affirm my personal mission statement, I turn to The Irish journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne: 

 

“The job of a journalist (teacher) is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”