Splish, splash . . .

On "Today in Literature" they have a nice little article about H. L. Mencken, who I think I would have liked. Give it a look. I found it somehow disturbing and comforting to see how little things have changed.

吸い取り紙が字を吸ひとらぬやおになった

The blotting paper/Won't blot/Any more.

                                                      -Hoosai

It's a lesson too late for the learning . . .

My mother-in-law passed away last night.

It was quite sudden, and we were not prepared. I came home from my Japanese class and my wife was not quite frantically phoning her sisters. The sister that still lives in Michigan had called to tell her that their mother had been admitted to the hospital, and that the doctors had said she most likely only had a few hours left.

My father-in-law had taken her to the doctor that morning because she wasn't feeling well, and he had put her in the hospital immediately. She had pneumonia, and then things became terrible. My wife called the hospital. She talked to her father. She called an aunt and told her what was happening, and asked that she go to the hospital and support her dad. She searched online for a flight to Detroit, and kept calling the hospital and her sisters. And somewhere around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, her father called her.

Thank you falettinme be mice elf...

Today's entry on the OUPblog has some interesting things to say about the mythology of Thanksgiving day. I have always found it interesting that even in this article we are told the primary reason for the Pilgrim's coming to the new world was their search for religious freedom.

That's not exactly how I see it.

There is no doubt they were looking for a place where they would be free to practice their religion as they saw fit; but they in no way felt compelled to grant this freedom to others. Once they got here they were as intolerant of other beliefs and practices as Ferdinand and Isabella. Several years ago I spent quite a bit of time looking up the family history—or least those bits i could find. I'm pretty sure a couple of my great grand-fathers were either in witness protection programs, or aliens. But I stray from the topic. If I remember correctly, one of my ancestors that took advantage of the fact that the local tribes had a rather undeveloped Homeland Security Agency was expelled from the town in disgrace because he dared to differ on matters of scripture. Apparently he was free to practice his religion as long as it was exactly the way they said to. Seems oddly familiar.

Anyway, even though it's a holiday based on rampant, if not total, untruths, my wife and I still spend the day enjoying each other's company, and giving thanks that we are blessed with family and friends we probably don't deserve. May you also give thanks for the love in your life.

大根を煮た夕飯の子供達の中にいる
Boiled daikon for supper/Sitting among the children.

Hit that jive, Jack...

I have never been comfortable with slang, and cannot stand jargon in almost all of its forms.

When I was in high school I could not describe something as "fab" or "boss" with the proper élan; and a few years before that I was sure "daddy-0" was a term whose only real function was to make Maynard G Krebs sound funny. Was that cool cat "hip" or "hep"? If I was square was the kid ridiculing me triangular or circular? As far as I could tell the only purpose the words served was to make the speaker sound silly. It was as if they were trying too hard to make a distinction between their generation and their parents' generation.

It only got worse in college. Everything became far out and right on and groovy, unless, of course, it was really heavy or deep. Did I have a jones, or was the man keeping me down? What really happened at a happening, and could you have a be in outside? If I rapped with some freaks and we got into some heavy shit should I take a bath? And, finally, if you had some really righteous weed was it possible to get some that was blasphemous?

I became convinced that with the proper chemical enhancements the purpose of language ceased to be communication, and mutated into something that only needed to sound impressive. The goal was to sound amazingly metaphysical without actually imparting any information, "There is nothing you can do that can't be done," being a prime example. About the best that can be said is that my generation's slang prepared it for such marketing fact-vacuums as "professional grade."

As I see it, the purpose of slang like 'daddy-o' or 'groovy' is to make a distinction between the speaker's group and the rest of the world, and to convey the excitement and joy of being part of that group. We are young. We are inventive. We have broken free of the staleness of You. Our generation is more aware/expressive/happening than the last. This, of course, is nothing new. Just as Socrates complained about the lawless ignorance of the next generation, the youth of Athens probably thought he was two iambs short of a pentameter. As far as I can tell it has been going on ever since our 573,286th great grandparents grunted their parents were really dull sticks.

Jargon's purpose, on the other finger (the difference is small so it's on the same hand), is primarily to exclude. Whatever the group, be it Sherlock Holmes aficionados or stock brokers, they develop an argot that serves to separate Us (those who are in the know and part of the group) from Everyone Else.

Usually it starts as a form of shorthand. A way for textbook buyers, for example, to talk about the number of books they are going to acquire for a particular class. In this case they can say "QTC" instead of "quantity to cover", which is itself shorthand for "the number of books required to fulfill the needs of a particular class." The problem is that approximately thirty seconds after its first use this shorthand becomes a code that tells me if you are also a textbook buyer or just another student or faculty member spouting off.

A second, subtly different, use for jargon is to make the outsider feel small, stupid, impotent, unqualified or all of the above. "How dare you tell me how to do my job when you don't even know what a QTC is," being the typical attitude. The field of medicine has traditionally been the prime example of this behavior, but every group, no matter how small—or perhaps I should say, especially if it is small—is guilty to some extent. I'm sure that the three or four of you who are still reading this have, at some time or another, left a discussion with the IT department or an auto mechanic feeling slightly humiliated and very much enraged because you had just been made to feel like a mentally challenged three year old.

Is there a solution, or is one even needed? The answer to both is probably not. Slang will continue to be invented by those striving to express the excitement, joy, awe or fear they feel in discovering the universe and their place in it; and jargon will always be needed for a group to conduct their business, and will always be twisted to protect the group and exclude outsiders. My answer has been to avoid both as much as possible, but that has led to my having speech and writing styles that tend to make me sound like a fussy, old man.

Perhaps the real answer is, as they say, just to keep on keepin' on.

***********************
A couple footnotes:

My inability to use the adjective "boss" in the mid-sixties without a fair amount of irony might have had some self-evident causes, but I would have had the same problem with "smith" or "carmichael".

Maynard G Krebs was a character on "The Many Loves of Dobby Gillis" played by Bob Denver before he became Gilligan.

何か言いつつ車押し行く夫婦なり
A married couple/Pushing a hand-cart/Saying something to each other.
—Ittou

Then it's the blue ones who can't accept the green ones...

To continue the thought I started in my last post:

I used to believe I was a fairly laid back, easy going sort of person who pretty much accepted everyone on their own terms. Sure, there were those I didn't care for or didn't want to be around, but it was always individuals who repelled me. I was not prejudiced against any group. My parents had taught me acceptance and tolerance, and to always base my judgments on an individual's actions and not some group stereotype. I loved everybody, dammit!

I was full of it.

Right to the top.

I'm surprised my hair could turn gray.

I am about as full of baseless prejudices and bigoted opinions as a man can get and not start a religion. I'm not talking about perfectly healthy phobias like the fear of snakes or heights or chainsaws. Those are survival mechanisms designed to keep us from doing something stupid. I'm talking about uncontrollable disgust based on nothing more than an accent, religious belief, or music choice.

First, in no particular order, is the drivers of pick-up trucks. I suppose I picked them first because a couple of my previous posts involved pick-ups. Whenever I see a pick-up truck, especially the over sized types like an F350, Titan or Avalanche, I know the driver is an alcoholic, racist bully overcompensating for secret doubts about his manhood, possibly a Klan member.

The fact that 99%, or more, of these pick-up truck drivers are either family members I care for very much or very nice, considerate people who struggle daily to lead ethical, compassionate lives just doesn't enter into it.

Next there's county music. To me it is the music of choice for the klu klux klan, alcoholics, unaligned bigots, and wife beating illiterates. At its worst it is a neo-Nazi, jingoistic, hate spewing form of pseudo-patriotism that has, for me, no redeeming value.

Again, the fact that I quite like Lyle Lovett, Kathy Mattea, Nickel Creek, Emmy Lou Harris, Willie Nelson and Rosanne Cash is beside the point. Just because the albums "American IV" and "American V" by Johnny Cash have a haunting, devastating beauty is no reason to reconsider my prejudice in the least.

And then there's Southern accents. They are, to me, the verbal proof of illiteracy, probable racism, and sloth. The use of ya'll (yawl—a boat with its mizzen mast set aft of the rudder post) as a second-person pronoun can be all that's needed to make me want to leave the discussion or change the channel on the television.

Okay, so Jimmy Carter has a Southern accent and just happens to be one of the men I admire most. What of it? And just because the last Operations Manager I worked with had an accent that would make Paula Dean ask him to tone it down a little; and was one of the best managers I ever worked with makes no difference.

The point is: even though I am morally and ethically opposed to bigotry I have still managed to develop a fair number of senseless prejudices. Recognizing them, and being able to point out the infinite "exceptions" to my hypocritical dislikes does nothing obviate them. I don't believe this is unique to me, but just because everyone has a secret load of prejudices does nothing to excuse mine. The best I can do is recognize my bigotries, and do my best to allow individuals the chance to either win me over in spite of them, or piss me off for some other reason. It's not the Ideal my parents tried to instill in me, but I like to think that at some level I am applying the lesson and becoming, a little bit at a time, a person they could be proud of.

人をそしる心をすて豆の皮むく
Discarding my wish/To revile someone/I shell peas.
—Housai

We got to live together...

There's something about insomnia that makes me thoughtful—or irritable. Sometimes they're hard to tell apart.

My father was probably one of the most intelligent and compassionate men I have ever known. To most of the world he hid his hunger for knowledge and very suspect beliefs in equality, and presented a Depression-Era-Prairie-Farmer/Laborer persona that kept him unnoticed by social thugs like Joseph McCarthy. It was, after all the 1950s when truly believing in such unAmerican ideals like freedom of religion or the equality of Man and other Pinko/Socialist concepts could lose you your job, or worse.

At home, however, he read everything he could find; loved poetry and music almost as much as he loved my mother; and, with two notable exceptions, did not talk much about religious or racial tolerance/brotherhood, but demonstrated those ideals in the way he lived his life.

One day during the 1964 presidential campaign we were talking about Goldwater and Johnson and Kennedy (both John and Robert) and the Freedom Marches and, almost as an aside he said, "Never follow or even turn your back on a fanatic. Even if he's on your team. A fanatic will kill you and everyone you love without blinking an eye. He'll even kill everyone he loves."

Another time, when I was in college and, like Mark Twain, beginning to discover just how much that little, old man had learned since I was fourteen, he made the observation that all political systems became alike when taken to their extremes. To him there was no difference between Stalin and Hitler. Now that he's been gone for five years, I wonder if he would see the same similarities I see between our current president and Hitler in the 1930s.

But I digress. Sort of.

The first time I can remember my father becoming forcefully vocal about race was when I was about eight, and my younger brother was five. We were at The Pit (an old gravel pit turned into a swimming hole, but with a beach and life guards) and my brother was playing with one of his friends. At some point they did the "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" chant to decide who would get the pail or something, but instead of "catch a tiger by its toe" they used the 'n' word.

Time, very literally, stopped.

My father did not explode, but his anger tore holes in space and time, and made the Big Bang seem like a faint echo in the distance. It was all the more terrible because it was so contained. He did not yell or throw things or hit. (Dad never hit, or spanked, us). He became so rigid with anger he vibrated. At some level beyond hearing he was emitting a sound that caused dogs for blocks around to howl with fear; and made people fifty feet away who had no idea what was going on back away and looked for shelter. He picked my brother up and held him so they were face to face and said, almost in a whisper—a whisper that made you wish for a quick death and the comparative comforts of Hell—"You will never say that word again."

He put my brother down, and walked away.

Time let a few tentative seconds pass. Eventually Light and Sound found their way back into the universe.

That evening at supper Dad explained why he got so angry. He told us there were words that were only used to hurt other people and make them feel bad, and that word was one of them. That the people who used it were bullies and cowards who hurt other people to make themselves feel important and powerful, but they were really scared and weak and usually not very smart.

I'm sure that if we had been a bit older he would have a lot more to say, but at that time we didn't know about things like Nazis or lynchings or hatreds based on nothing more than skin color. The quiet sadness in his voice was, however, enough to make his words stay with both of us for the rest of our lives.

That was in 1954. Several years later we began hearing and reading reports of people demanding to be served lunch at a Dime Store lunch counter; or sit where they damn well please on a bus; or go to a somewhat more decent school. Then television learned how to make far away problems real and immediate, and on the evening news we watched terrified young girls walk down sidewalks lined with hate into a schoolhouse filled with hate; and people who's only crime was to want to vote or live in equality get beaten down by fire hoses and truncheons and attacked by dogs.

At that time we were attending the Methodist Church in town. My family had a fairly complex relationship with the concepts of god and organized religion, but during those periods we and theology were tentatively reconciled my mother's default religion was Methodist. Dad had had a slightly more adventurous experience with religion that included a stint as a Seventh Day Adventist elder responsible for converting twenty-six souls to the faith. For which he was certain he was doomed to Hell. Basically he felt all priests and preachers were either misguided or criminal. If you were lucky they would do you no real harm, and steal only a little bit of your stuff. So when we would begin one of our periodic stabs at conventional sanctity, we would end up going to a Methodist Church because it was Mom's favorite and Dad didn't care.

One of the town's Methodist Church's trademarks was a cross on the front of the steeple made out of movie marque lights. There were 57 lights in the cross, and at any given time a fair number of them would be burned out. For some reason getting all of the lights working at the same time seemed to be so important that it took up amazing amounts of discussion time during the membership meetings. But very little, bordering on none, overt action came out of those discussions. "It was a sacrilege." "It was disrespectful." "It was blasphemous." "It presented a poor image of the congregation." It was everything, and more, except important enough for someone to actually do something.

After we had joined the church one spring I heard Dad talking to Mom about the lights. He got home from his night shift at The Products a little after 7:00am, and he usually left to roof houses at 8:00am. He'd come home at 4:00pm, eat supper and spend time with us until about 7:00, when he'd go to sleep until 10:00 and then get up and go to work at 11:00pm. Sometimes, when the weather was bad or he didn't have a roofing job, he would nap for an hour or two before my brother and I got home from school. He worked these fourteen to sixteen hour days almost forty years.

Anyway, he figured on his way to that day's job he could throw the extension ladder up against the steeple, change the bulbs, and be on his way in about ten minutes. Mom was against it because Dad was none to steady on a ladder, and the fewer times he went up one the better. She hated his roofing work and was always happiest when it rained and in the winter.

It was, as they say, a moot point.

The next Sunday, in amongst the planning for Easter, some one wondered what the congregation should do, "if, you know, a ni...a Negro family moved into town and, you know, wanted to join our church." All of a sudden all kinds of hitherto unknown regulations started coming out of the woodwork. Services were for members of the congregation only and their guests. To be a member you had to reside in the town, or whatever you call a Methodist Church's jurisdiction, for two years; bring a letter of introduction from your former pastor; be sponsored by two elders; have donated $2000 to the building fund; and for all I know cured polio and solved the problem of going faster than light.

Dad finally got a chance to speak, and I knew it was going to be good because Mom started gathering up our hats and jackets and stuff for a quick getaway. "What the hell do you mean, "what are we going to do?" If you were a man, and a Christian, you'd introduce yourself, shake their hand, and make room so they could sit down. For weeks now I've listened to a lot of crap about a stupid cross having lights burned out. Instead of getting out there and helping some old couple or widow take down their storm windows and put up screens, or helping some family down on its luck put in a kitchen garden you're all in here whining about some fucking light bulbs, and now you have the gaul to wonder whether or not some decent, hard working people can join your church. As far as I'm concerned they have more right to it than you do. And before you say another word or get off your fat asses to change even one of those God damned lights, try reading that Bible you're always carrying around."

With that we left. Mom and Dad lived in that town another forty years, and never once set foot in that church again. The next time Mom decided they needed to go to church (I was in college.) they drove to the church in the next town over. And for those of you who might be wondering—yes. He did say "fucking light bulbs." It was the only time that I know of that he used the word in his ninety-three years.

大とこの糞ひりおわす枯れのかな
The archbishop/Evacuates the honorable bowels/On the withered moor.
—Buson

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .5番

One of the more interesting inventions humans came up with over the two thousand years we have been talking about was printing. It seems that for most of the long, mostly forgotten history of humankind either you or your mate actually had to remember everything you needed to know to survive. I mean everything. Stuff like:

• How to find and catch dinner without doing too much damage to yourself.
• How to keep the neighborhood lion from feeding her family with yours.
• What the exact procedures were when someone had coveted your ass (or worse yet, your wife’s ass).
• How to build a shelter, a fire and a baby carrier.
• Which mushrooms were safe to eat, which ones would cause you to see strange things, and which ones would kill you
• Where it was safe to cross the river, and where to suggest strangers cross it when they came by trying to sell you some kind of god.
• How to keep the kids amused in the evening.

And that’s just for starters.