Words Fail Me

These were the books that were by my father’s reading chair when he passed away. These were the books he was in the middle of.

When I was very, very little, my family loved to go to some long lost Mexican restaurant that had a jukebox.  My favorite song on that jukebox was Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)”.  My father bought a 45 of the song so I could listen to it at home.  The Richard Scarry sticker on the label is to mark it clearly as a “David IV record.”

My father vacillated between being ruthlessly, obsessively organized and lazy.  We found carefully labelled boxes containing tax returns, every single utility bill, every single credit card receipt, and two inch stacks of to-do lists for each of the last ten years plus tax returns going all the way back to 1951.  But we also found a box simply labelled “stuff.”

My grandfather owned a printing company on Highland in Hollywood.  Because of this, the Young family knows odd pits of old school printing arcana.  “Padding compound” is a liquid which dries into a rubbery adhesive which is used at the top of tearaway scratchpads.

As children, my grandfather would go to the bank and get fresh one dollar bills.  Then he’d put a stack of bills on a dollar-sized piece of cardboard and paint padding compound at the top to make tearaway scratchpads of actual money.  He used them for stocking stuffers and bonus birthday gifts.  My cousins and I all loved them.

In sorting through my father’s effects, Elizabeth and I found a huge tub of padding compound.  My father had tearing up scratch paper into business card-size pieces and then making tiny scratchpads out of them to use for his to-do lists and such.

For as long as I’ve been able to drive, and except for the years living in China, I have always driven up into Angeles Crest National Forest to Mt. Lowe  at some point during the week between Christmas and New Year.  I sit and look out at the pine trees and think about the upcoming year.  I consider my plans and resolutions.  My annual tradition.

Sometimes there is snow, but I fear that our climate is changing so fast that there will never be snow again on these winter visits.

For winter solstice, I treated myself to a pseudo-pagan feast!  A year ago on this day, I was waiting to fly through the longest night of the year.

My dear friend Debbie told me that she had gotten into an argument about the differences between “belief” and “faith” and “perspective.”

Perspective has two senses.  In the sense of “Well, from my perspective…” then, yeah, it’s closely related to a belief because it’s an admission of subjectivity.  But there is an objective sense of the word, as in “From my perspective, I can’t see inside my neighbor’s apartment from inside mine and from her perspective, she can’t see inside my apartment from hers.”  So, there’s subjective perspective (in the realm of ideas) and objective perspective (in the realm of physics.)

I think belief and faith are clearly related because faith is what fills any gaps between evidence which allows a belief to be believed.  But that’s what makes me think that belief is a choice:  you’re choosing to augment facts with faith.  It’s that element of choice which makes it something quite different from an objective perspective.

Are my senses reliable enough to have a truly objective perspective?  Perhaps not, but I’ll assume that they are until I have evidence to the contrary.  Animals wouldn’t survive long if their senses weren’t at some gross level objectively accurate most of the time.

I’m allergic to taking selfies, but I felt like a needed to document the result of my presbyopia diagnosis.  It literally means “old man eyes.”

On this Veterans Day weekend, I find myself reading Thucydides‘ History of the Peloponnesian War and just came to the funeral oration that Pericles gave for the annual commemoration of the Athenian war dead.  I was particularly moved and saddened by this portion on Athens, on what the fallen soldiers had died for, because it reminded me of America and how far we’ve fallen short of our country’s ideals:

“Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others.  Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them.  It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few.  But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit.  Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition.  There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant.  While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.”

Over the years, I’ve joked with close friends like Martin and Ben about my life as if it were an indie movie.  A handful of things happened over the last couple of days which, once again, felt like a series of small melancholic character moments:

• I was diagnosed with presbyopia and learned I need reading glasses
• A possible programming job opportunity came up, but in Carpinteria where Dan & Snow had planned to start their youth center
• It was announced that Rian Johnson has signed a deal to make his own Star Wars trilogy
• The palm fronds which have hung over my balcony since I moved in–and which made my apartment feel like a treehouse–were unceremoniously chainsawed back

But all of that is merely craving & attachment.