Flawed Design

Want proof that there is no benevolent God? That Intelligent Design is a flawed concept? That life really is random, meaningless, chaotic and cruel? I can provide it in one word.

Mosquitoes.

Just before my trip to Ghana, I spent $70 at Sports Basement on a thin hooded jacket sprayed with insect repellent. I was picturing mosquito swarms torturing me each evening and I was determined to beat the system. But here’s the amazing truth: in my two weeks there, I never saw, heard or felt a single mosquito! Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Likewise, none in Verona, none in Salzburg, none in Cinque Terre, none in Positano. Each evening outdoors freed from the tyranny of the whine, buzz, sting and slap. My Sports Basement jacket lay unused at the bottom of my suitcase.

And yet last night in San Francisco, determined to overcome my jet lag and stop waking up at 3:30 in the morning, I heard the whine from hell. At 3:30 am. Moved to the couch, a few moments of peace and there it was again. What for the hell? Mosquitoes in San Francisco? Cold, chilly, summer-fogged San Francisco? And not just mosquitoes, but supremely intelligent mosquitoes who would wait just until the moment I was about to drift back into blissful sleep and then attack.

Today I begin teaching my five-day jazz course and had hoped for a well-rested night before teaching alone 6 hours each day. No such luck, thanks to God’s flawed— or cruel— plan. How can anyone have faith in a planet with mosquitoes?

I’m wearing my jacket to bed tonight.

The Missing Memo

 A reporter sent to do a story about the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem sat and observed for a week. She noticed one man who came rain or shine three times a day, each time praying for an hour without stopping. She finally approached him and asked how long he had been practicing these devoted prayers.

“40 years, “ he answered.

“And what do you pray for?”

“That children will respect their parents, that parents will love and nurture their children. That women and men be granted equal rights and every one is free to follow their talent as long as it does no obvious harm to others. That Jews and Arabs will learn to co-exist peacefully and that love and compassion will triumph over hatred and ignorance.”

“Wow! Those are beautiful prayers. After 40 years, how do you feel?”

“ Like I’m talking to a freakin’ wall!!”

I’ve told this joke before, but it seems more relevant and somehow, less funny, now. I’ve always been a believer in human progress and have collected lots of data to prove it. Some 2500 years ago, Buddha broke through the caste system and taught that all of us were equally endowed with Buddha nature that we could realize through our dedicated efforts and the support of a community. Some 500 years later in another part of the world, another radical named Jesus suggested that it was time for people to stop smiting each other, turn the other cheek, become as little children and love their neighbor as themselves. Since that time, whole cultures moved from tyrant kings and suffering peasants to democracies, women rose to equal partners in work, life and love, children moved from being beaten in school to being nurtured in school, hate-mongering racists moved from trumpeting unashamed their vitriol on the airwaves to making public apologies, laws shifted from prohibiting whole groups from voting and living where they chose and marrying whom they chose to being granted their inalienable rights. From one point of view, human culture is slowly rising to its full possibility of freedom, fulfillment, compassion and enjoyment of the brief time allotted to us.

For over three years in this Blog, I’ve been trying to bear witness to a vision of hope, health and happiness, from the beauty of Positano to the glory of international folks meeting to make music in Salzburg to the dynamic culture I witnessed in Ghana to countless classes inspired by the children I teach. Many moments in many days that feed my belief that we are gradually becoming so much better than we have been.

And then I read the news. Nigerian girls are abducted, civilians are shot down over the Ukraine, more bombings in Israel and on the Gaza strip, more kids killed in a school shooting. What is going on here? Innocents slaughtered senselessly, children brought up to hate the other, arms dealers investing their profits in comfy retirement programs while the epidemic of violence with guns, bombs and missiles continues, people sitting in lawn chairs cheering the distant bombs like it’s the 4^th of July. Have we gone totally mad?!!

And in places where we are mercifully free from daily violence, we sell video games to the kids and make movie after movie feeding sensational violence as the norm. In places where kids could be making beautiful music, reading and writing profound poetry, investigating with their minds and senses the miracles of the natural world, we narrow them down to paper-test standards and grade and judge them.

People, didn’t you get the Memo?! We’ve been moving steadily towards justice, compassion, understanding and yet we seem to be stepping backwards. Back to ethnic in-fighting, religious persecution, mongol hordes invading, women’s rights reduced, children narrowed to test numbers, blind fanatic faith trumping questioning and intelligence, greed everywhere. What’s going on?!

In the face of it, it’s tempting to set down this vision of human health and happiness as naïve New Age pablum and join the cynics, get with the “real world.” But I refuse. I—and the countless like-minded folks I meet—may be just talking to a freakin’ wall, but it just may be that such acts are what is holding it all together. And what other choice is there really? Nothing to do but keep sending out the memo and hope that it will finally be delivered to those who need it.

Which is all of us.

Story Time

In the time it took to fly from Naples, Italy to San Francisco, California, I lived some five different lives. The first was the real time 4:30 awakening, cab ride, flight to Frankfort, stop in the bookstore, talk to the Customs Officer about the World Cup, negotiate with the flight attendant when the only dinner left was beef stew, wait one hour for the bags in San Francisco, get on the BART train and the MUNI bus and 20 hours later, walk through our front door to our old familiar house awaiting us.

But in-between was the pleasure of vicariously living the life of Walter Mitty adventuring in Iceland and Afghanistan, hanging out with Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz in Barcelona, visiting the Huxtable house in New York and entering the courtroom drama of a contested will in Mississippi. Immersed in two movies, one TV show and one book (plus some strange dream life while sleeping), the 20 hours passed quickly, thanks to the way stories change time. Swept up in a narrative with characters you’d either like to hang out with (Scarlett and Penelope!), or make you laugh (Bill Cosby) or intrigue you (a Southern white man who bypasses his family and leaves a 20 million dollar inheritance to his black housekeeper), time passes swiftly and the forward-ticking clock melts into an ever-unfolding present. Much the same as it does in music.

For those who haven’t figured it out, the movies were The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Vicky Christina Barcelona, the TV show was the Bill Cosy show which we watched religiously every Thursday night with our kids (it holds up!) and the book that I bought in the Frankfort Airport was John Grisham’s Sycamore Row. Usually I’m an advocate for the elevated arts—Zora Neale Hurston over Danielle Steele, Thelonious Monk over Snoop Dog, The Seven Samarui over  The Big Bang Theory and so on. But though I love the many layers of timeless literature, its poetry, lyricism, breathtaking language, deep character development and frontier exploration of the human psyche, I’m also a sucker for plot. Especially courtroom dramas. This John Grisham is one of his best and has me more interested in his story than mine at the moment. So that when I awoke jet-lagged at 3:30 in the morning, I thought: “Oh, boy! I get to read a few more chapters!” And I did.

But now time to resume my story—unpack the bags, fill the refrigerator, pay the bills, prepare for Monday’s Jazz Course— and hopefully play some piano and ride my bike. In fog, I might add. Ah, San Francisco.

Onward!

PS One of movie choices on the plane which I should have checked out but didn't— Pompeii!

Homeward Bound

My shorts have a hole in the pocket, my sneakers have a hole in the toe, my razor blade is dull. Two clean shirts left, two squeezes of toothpaste, two pages left in my last book— it’s time to go home.

It has been five weeks since I’ve been in my own house and truth be told, I don’t miss that much. What am I looking forward to? My piano. My bike. Asian food. What am I not looking forward to? Fog. Fog. And did I mention? Fog.

Don’t get me wrong. I love San Francisco. It’s a great place to come home to and a great place to stay in for awhile. But there hasn’t been a day in the last five weeks, starting with the Coretta Scott King Room in the Obama Hotel in Accra, Ghana and ending with the Kleopatra Hotel in Naples, Italy, that has been anything less than wonderful. Dzodze, Ghana. Ho, Ghana. Verona, Italy. Salzburg, Austria. Cinque Terre, Italy. Positano, Italy. All now indelibly merged in a lifetime of travel memory, all adding to this composite self created from the meeting with other folks, other places, other ways until the otherness disappears.

To finish the story line: Haven’t mentioned the accordions, tambourines and occasional saxophones or trumpets in the tunnels of Cinque Terre or on the trains to and from Naples. Getting to know the repertoire, with Besame Mucho at the top of the charts. And keep wondering when they split the money if the tambourine player gets equal share. Musically speaking, not as much happening there as in the accordion. But it all adds the hoped-for charm and atmosphere and one accordion player was particularly virtuosic.

Having arrived at our close-to-the-airport hotel, the night was young, so we set off 20 minutes downtownish to find a recommended restaurant. Remember my query from before? “Is there any ugly Italian city?” Well, I can’t judge a whole city by our walk, but let’s just say that garbage on the streets far outnumbered flowers. The rambunctious gang of boys in front of us were not exactly menacing, but also not quite Boy Scout material. The general atmosphere was like Hoboken, New Jersey (of my childhood— hear it’s pretty upscale now). And part of that was fine! Not a tourist in sight, here was a city going about its business of survival and who am I to judge?

The restaurant was outdoors and my wife Karen was thrilled to try the regional specialty, a kind of mussel stew. She gave it five stars, I was content with grilled vegetables and the always-too-big pizza that I’ll eat on the plane for breakfast. The waiter was fun and wanted to show off his German, but a bit lost on us. Back to the hotel and a grueling 4:30 am wake-up call. How different it will be to be on a plane instead of the bus winding down the daredevil turns or the train with the accordion player or, best of all, out hiking up and down the extraordinary terrain of the Italian West Coast.

Thanks to my new trusty friends on this trip— my Marmot day pack, my Clark’s sandals, my Estonian hat, my Hetch-Hetchy water bottle. Thanks to all the path builders who made the stone steps we traversed, to all the drivers, the cooks, the hotel owners, the maids, the gelateria scoopers. Thanks to Rick Steves and Jess Walters and Dan Brown and Anita Shreve and other authors who kept me entertained with one foot always in another story. Thanks to all the great Orff students who joined us in Ghana and Verona, all the Orff colleagues who helped organize it all. I could go on.

But I just remembered that 4:30 wake-up call. See you in San Francisco!

Advice from Pompeii

Back where we began, waiting for the bus at the traffic-jammed corner. Then it was an arrival to an unknown six days, now a departure with the echo of the moon shining over the nighttime waters, beautifully silent with insect trill, the sun lighting up the cliff-clinging house of Positano below.

Back from the beach yesterday to a quiet afternoon, final dinner at our little restaurant—homemade ravioli, insalata mixta with radicchio, rucola and more for a mere 3 Euros (tip: should you eat here, don’t get the green salad—it’s iceberg lettuce). Fond farewell to our waiter and over to the Festival at the nearby church. It was a full day homage to the Virgin Mary and by the time we arrived, she was taken out of the church and serenaded by a marching band. Interesting combination. Then taken back in the church while the hired Pop band took the stage, complete with synthesizer, inaudible congas, accordion and two “Go-Go girls” clad in tight gold sequin dresses doing loosely choreographed dance steps to pretty bad music. Wondering whether the Virgin Mary requested them. (Earlier in the day, I heard some of Charlie Parker’s Moose the Mooch on the keyboard and wondered if this was the same player and if so, how could he stand playing this other stuff? Of course, I’m sure the answer is— money. Though I think the Virgin Mary might dig Bird.)

We left early on, but the music followed us to our room and then moved on to a comedian with a loud microphone, followed by midnight fireworks over the rooftop. Up the next morning too early to the raucous call of roosters, buzzing flies and a non-stop barking dog that surely would be dead if I was a member of the NRA. A final breakfast and farewell to our warm-hearted hosts, Salvadore and Carmela, lug the suitcases up the stairs, catch the bus and then wait for the next. (See opening sentence.) It did come, we did get on, we did get on the train to Pompei, we did get to leave our luggage (for free) at the Pompei gates and now in the heat of the mid-day sun, in we went to be real tourists and educate ourselves about the volcano-destroyed town of Pompei. AD 79, I believe.

Rick Steves’ xeroxed pages in hand, we passed up both the live guides and the audio tour and set about going from number to number. There was City Hall, there the bakery, their the fast food joint, there the rich man’s villa, there the gym and hot tub, there the brothel (with erotic frescoes above the small rooms with stone slab beds). Rick’s punch line is that though it was almost 2,000 years ago, the folks pretty much lived like we do—eating, drinking, socializing, sporting, figuring out traffic patterns, even with running water from the ingenious aqueducts (though I think they hadn’t arrived at flush toilets yet). They had no idea that this distant mountain was an active volcano and even if they had, probably would have kept on like we do in San Francisco; “Let’s hope for the best.”

Coming to the end of Rick’s pages, we followed our nose down to the end of one avenue and came upon a path flanked by tall cypress trees and a Coliseum overgrown with grass.

Not sure whether this is where the Christians-to-the-lions entertainment happened, but seems possible. From there to some benches under shaded trees and after two hours of touring around the stone streets with the bricked buildings and nary a plant in sight, it felt like arriving in the Catskills from downtown Manhattan. We had emerged from ancient ruins into contemporary life with flowers, trees, grass, shade and a welcome breeze that was reviving beyond description. The kind of small blessed moments the weary-traveler appreciates like the backpacker savors Spam in a pan.

Finally, the train into Naples, a cab to the Kleopatra Hotel with a picture of Liz Taylor (serendipitous because of the book Beautiful Ruins I read here— highly recommended, by the way), an evening ahead before a brutal 4:30 awakening. Having read this far, it’s time to reward you with the punch line of the title. What advice does Pompeii hold for us?

1.    Don’t live under a volcano.

2. If you do and it explodes, run like hell and don’t get hung up by the visuals (“Wow! Cool! Look at that!”).

3. The secret to happiness is to balance fertility with money. As demonstrated in the photo below. (Yes, that’s a sack of money on a scale balanced with an erect penis over a bowl of fruit and that was the explanation. The three lower chakras summarized in one image—Food. Sex. Power.) Those crazy Pompeiians!!

1.