On The Passing Of President George H.W. Bush

Memorial services were held in Washington today honoring of the 41rst President of The United States, George H.W. Bush.

Due to the influx of media coverage over the past few days, I’ve not only learned more about him than I ever knew, or thought I wanted to know, but to my surprise, I also found myself getting a little choked up. Fond memories his family, friends, and even former political adversaries shared of him, as well as excerpts from numerous personal letters he’d written over the years were touching, to say the least.

I’ve never considered myself a political person. I still don’t. I have no allegiance or affiliation with the right nor the left. I see things as I see them.
I was only 17 when Bush took office in 89. I remember little of his politics or the policies of his administration. I do remember his infamous pledge “read my lips, no new taxes” during his 88 campaign, however, and I remember the gulf war and all the tensions leading up to the gulf war. Operation Desert Shield. Operation Desert Storm.

I remember being stopped on the street in the summer of 1990 on my way to work by some very persistent Army recruiters. I had just turned 18 and probably looked even younger than that, but they were not deterred. They gave me a card with a number on it. In return, I think I gave them my number. Subsequently, I was called on the phone multiple times that summer by various recruiters wanting to meet with me.

I remember all of the yellow ribbons on lapels and tee shirts and car antennas. It was a crazy but patriotic time. I also remember the seeming reluctance Bush had of going to war even after he must have known it was unavoidable. I remember the deadline, and the multitude of chances Saddam was given to pull out of Kuwait and comply with U.N. resolutions which he defiantly ignored.

When the airstrikes did finally begin early the following year, they were well planned and equally well carried out, ultimately resulting in what would be a very short war. There will always be debates about whether it was ended properly, but that, like most everything else, is for the revisionists of history to determine.

Just as recently as this past summer I was in Kennebunkport Maine at Walker’s Point and saw the stately Bush residence once again, out there on its island, flags flapping high in the wind. The property has been in the Bush family since 1901. I remember wondering who would occupy it after H.W. passed. Though that is still unclear, what has always been crystal clear to me from visits to Kennebunkport over the years, walking the streets and browsing the quaint shops, is how much Bush was a loved and admired member of the community.

As well as a President can hope to be, he was a man of the people, the opposite of divisive. He was a unifier. A steady hand at the wheel during turbulent times. His thoughtfulness, humility, patience, and cool-headedness; the unwavering commitment and respect for the office and the people it strives to serve, and a willingness to attempt to understand the opposition’s point of view even when in direct conflict with his own at times, were some of his most admirable skills as a leader, and sadly missing from the office today.

May 41 rest in peace. He is revered and missed by a nation starving for the kind of leadership he gave.

Einstein’s Paradox? Peace, War, and The Bomb

“I do not consider myself the father of the release of atomic energy. My part in it was quite indirect. I did not, in fact, foresee that it would be released in my time.” – Albert Einstein

Just 12 years before the first atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki Japan, the great scientist Albert Einstein and the great psychologist Sigmund Freud published their correspondence on the very subject of war and peace in a 1933 pamphlet simply titled Why War? (1933,Völkerbund: Internationales Institut für Geistige Zusammenarbeit). Incidentally, this was the same year that the world’s most infamous tyrant, Adolf Hitler, assumed the throne of power in Germany, and subsequently, Albert Einstein relinquished his German citizenship.

Living in Switzerland in 1939, Einstein sent a letter to President Roosevelt on the possible military implications of atomic energy. A few years after being granted citizenship to the United States in 1940, Einstein would in fact become a consultant to the Navy on explosives and ammunition during world war 2.

For all of the miraculous achievements and discoveries Einstein would make in his lifetime, his association with atomic energy was one that perhaps troubled him until his death.

After seeing the horrific aftermath of the worlds first Atomic bomb blasts in the summer of 1945, Einstein would in the following year become the chairman of the Emergency committee of atomic scientists, pushing the United Nations to form a world government for maintaining peace. Einstein understood perhaps better than anyone at the time the dangerous implications of atomic energy, and no doubt feared the future of such a weapon; the grave possibility of such devastating power being unleashed on human kind again.

So what might he think if he were alive today to witness the largest proliferation of nuclear armament the world has ever seen? And with an increasing number of smaller nations developing the potential for launching their own nuclear programs, the danger level seems sure to keep escalating. Oddly enough, perhaps he wouldn’t be all that surprised. Einstein himself seemed to believe that the atomic bomb should be manufactured by the U.S. Not necessarily to be used, but as a deterrent from other nations (namely Germany at the time) from gaining the capabilities first and launching attacks.

” I am not saying the U.S should not manufacture and stockpile the bomb, for I believe that it must do so; it must be able to deter another nation from making an atomic attack when it also has the bomb.” – Albert Einstein

Though a bitter pill to swallow, in some sense it is difficult to argue with this logic; once atomic capabilities were realized, the worlds arms race was on, and there was no simply no turning back.

Still, reaching such a conclusion had to have been troubling for Einstein who’d in fact spent the better part of his life advocating for peace. Further reinforcing this hope and ideal, in his very last letter to Bertrand Russell before his death in 1955 Einstein agreed to the signing of a joint manifesto urging all nations to renounce nuclear weapons.
But after years of disarmament agreements being nowhere remotely in sight, smaller nations today are perhaps (aside from whatever other unknown agendas) feeling an urgency to build these weapons, in defense of, or as a deterrent from, being over taken by the worlds super powers who continue to become only more and more powerful.

In one of those earlier letters to Freud in Why War? Einstein poses the question:

“Is there any way of delivering man from the menace of war? It is common knowledge that with the advance of modern science, this issue has come to mean a matter of life and death for civilization as we know it; nevertheless for all the zeal displayed, every attempt at its solution has ended in a lamentable breakdown.”

He would then a short time later write:

“Anybody who really wants to abolish war must resolutely declare himself in favor of his own country’s resigning a portion of its sovereignty in place of international institutions.”

For more of these correspondences between Einstein and Freud they can be found in Why War? It is not particularly easy to obtain a copy of this pamphlet, however, since a very limited number were printed, and no doubt far fewer preserved. Two other books containing many of these insights and ideas titled The World As I See It (1934, Covici, Friede) and The Quotable Einstein (1996, Princeton University Press) are much more accessible and far less expensive.

The Technology Diet: Staying Mentally Fit In The Age Of Ceaseless Noise And Distraction

In the 1984 classic Sci-fi movie The Terminator director James Cameron first introduced us to a futuristic corporation called skynet; an artificial intelligence system that will spark a nuclear holocaust, a struggle with humankind to take over the planet many years into the future. When I first watched this movie as a kid I was mesmerized by the storyline, and of course those mind-blowing 80’s special effects. It was a movie. A fantasy. Never once did it cross through my pre pubescent brain that anything even remotely close could occur in my lifetime.

Now, 34 years later, with the steady development of AI it seems at least plausible, if not likely, that technology is soon approaching its highest precipice yet of the unknown, and the deep chasm beneath is teaming with potentially vexing problems for the world as we know it. The real question is will all of this technology solve as many problems as it might create?

As is often the case, fiction mirrors real life, at least to some degree. Sci-fi books and movies that seemed incredibly futuristic in their time seem that much more possible as I get older and technology steadily progresses. Things have a much more subtle arch of progression in real life, however. If we stop to carefully consider where we are now as opposed to 34 years ago can it be denied that machines and computer technology play a much more integral role in the daily lives of society today? If we’re realistic, I don’t think so. As these changes take place over the course of time, however, we barely notice it until one day we stop and really reflect on how much are lives have changed from when we were kids, and even more so from the lives of our parents, and yet even more startling still, in contrast to those of our grandparents.

The difference, at least to me, is that our forebears used the technology and machines of the time to get places, to create more efficient production, transportation, and to build things and thus move the world forward. Not unlike us. Although our version of the world and it’s progress looks vastly different. Computers certainly make the world run more efficiently in many, many ways. But along the way the scale seems to be shifting as well, perhaps even beginning to approach a tipping point in the opposite direction where technology is gradually coming to consume, if not outright own us. Any remaining doubts I had about this, were easily put to rest after accidentally leaving my smart phone at home for one single work shift. It might have been interesting If I’d bothered to count the number of times I found myself reaching for it like an incessant itch. At first, you feel a little naked, much the same as you might if you left your wallet at home, or if you want me a bit more dramatic, as if someone just hacked off your right arm. So… assuming we’ve all experienced this at some point, whether intentionally or by accident, the questions are for each of us to consider. Do we own it, or does it own us? How long can we manage to go without it?

A recent study estimated that Americans check their phones on an average of two hundred times per day. This may seem like an unrealistically high number until we take a closer look around us. Everywhere we go, everywhere we look, people are staring at screens. People run into each other on the streets because they don’t look where they are going anymore lest they pull their eyes from the lure of the screen. These devices fill the empty spaces of our lives, the spaces we used to use for noticing things and making astute observations. Of course, as I may have hinted in the previous paragraph, I am just as guilty of this as the next person.

In George Orwell’s brilliant post world war 2 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four he writes about a world where his characters most intimate private moments are often violated. People are tracked and speech is monitored. Isn’t this in some sense happening today thanks in large part to those smart phones we carry with us everywhere and hold so dear? Everything we see and hear is based on our speech patterns and search engine algorithms and are then boldly and aggressively used to manipulate and sell us stuff. And it all works like a charm.

So what’s the answer? One thing we can be assured of is that technology isn’t going anywhere. It’s only going to get faster and smarter and more virtually interactive; the proliferation of information easier to over consume and become more dependent on. It is us who have to learn to put the brakes on, to discipline ourselves, to be more discreet, to protect what we can of our privacy, do the necessary research to make careful decisions, and perhaps most importantly, to know when to turn off and just give our minds and bodies the respite it needs from all this noise.

Perhaps one way we can do this is by blocking out certain portions of the day for just shutting off. Separate ourselves from our devices. We could start by committing to put them away and silencing them while we’re conversing with someone, or at a restaurant, or while watching a movie, or spending time with family. We can choose to just be in the moment rather than distracted by the endless notification beeps and blips and cute little ringtones. Then, maybe we could try this again while taking a walk alone in nature, or through our neighborhood, or go for a run, swim laps, read a book, a real physical book that we actually have to hold up to the light and turn pages. We could do this while we work on art projects, or hobbies, or listen to music, or meditate. We can choose to fully focus on the experience of these things in the moment. The possibilities are endless for escape.

Maybe all we have to do is commit to the practice of shutting off a few times a day. Obviously many of us can’t do these things during a work day, I get it, but when time is ours we can choose how much of that time we have to be staring at screens, whether it be gaming, answering emails, surfing the net, or perusing social media. All of these platforms are very useful and have their place, but it is also no secret that they all can, and often do, contribute to increased stress and anxiety levels. We can, however, establish a healthy balance just as with anything else. These platforms do not have to own us. They do not have to command our attention during all waking hours of the day and night. We can draw boundaries the same as we do when choosing when and what foods to eat for optimal physical health.

Recent sleep studies have concluded that turning off devices or staring at blue light for sixty to ninety minutes before going to bed can significantly improve the quality of our sleep. How many of us do this? I sure don’t, but I intend to give it a shot. It seems the importance of this cannot be overstated, especially for someone like me who doesn’t get a lot of sleep to begin with it only makes sense that the sleep I do get be of the highest quality possible for optimal cognition and focus throughout my waking hours.

As humans we have proven time and again our incredible aptitude for adaptability. As technology grows and distractions become more and more prevalent is it not left up to us to figure out a way to take back these precious present moments? After all, the present moment is the ONE thing we truly own, and it is all we will ever have to make the worst or best of.

Netflix Documentary Explores The Life And Work Of The Iconic Joan Didion

While scrolling recently for something interesting to watch on television I came across a Netflix original documentary titled Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold from actor/producer Griffin Dunne who also happens to be the nephew of the great essayist and author Joan Didion.

Born in 1934 in Sacramento, Didion once wrote “people are formed by the landscape they grow up in.”

Much of her early and most resonating pieces would be about or based in her native state of California during the free love movement of the sixties.

This intimate and moving documentary is a thoughtful tribute to Didion’s roller coaster of a life and brilliant writing career which first began in the late fifties as a journalist for Vogue.

Didion, now 83, recalls being encouraged by her mother to enter a writing contest for college seniors sponsored by Vogue which she won while in her senior year at Berkeley earning herself a job with the magazine. After graduation, she moved to New York City where she would spend the next eight years and meet her eventual husband the late John Gregory Dunne, a novelist and screenwriter.

The couple moved back to the west coast in 1965 and settled in Los Angeles where they managed to scratch out a living writing pieces for many prestigious publications of the day such as the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Life just to name a few. Later that year they adopted a baby girl named Quintana.

Back in her home state of California, Didion found herself in the middle of a new cultural revolution that would soon sweep the entire country. She wrote pieces about what she was seeing for New York magazines in mesmerizing prose that would later be dubbed new journalism such as the title essay in what is perhaps her most well-known book Slouching Towards Bethlehem  (1968) which is a collection of these earlier essays.

The piece is about the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967, where after following a contact to his home, Didion reported finding a five-year old child sitting on the living room floor tripping on acid. When Dunne asks “what was it like to be a journalist in the room when you saw this little kid on acid?” Didion looking delicate and frail responds after a lengthy pause “well… let me tell you, it was gold. The long and short of it is that you live for moments like that if you’re doing a piece. Good or bad.”

Didion went on to write several more books in subsequent years of both non fiction and fiction, not to mention six screenplays and one play for the theatre based on her 2005 book titled The Year Of Magical Thinking  which is essentially about mourning and the daily struggles of living and picking up the pieces after the loss of her husband.

Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for both a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Didion, no stranger to tragedy, suffered the devastating loss of her husband and daughter in the very same year. The loss of her daughter Quintana was documented in a later book titled Blue Nights (2011).

Joan Didion is above all a survivor, and her literary voice after all of these years is still vibrant, eloquent and captivating.

If you haven’t seen the documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold all I can say is Didion fan or not, and especially if you’re not already familiar with her work, I highly recommend it.

I’ve listed all of Joan Didion’s books here chronologically for easy reference:

Run River (fiction) 1963
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (nonfiction) 1968
Play It As It Lays (fiction) 1970
A Book Of Common Prayer (fiction) 1977
The White Album (nonfiction) 1979
Salvador (nonfiction) 1983
Miami (nonfiction) 1987
After Henry (nonfiction) 1992
The Last Thing He Wanted (fiction) 1996
Political Fictions (nonfiction) 2001
Where I was From (nonfiction) 2003
The Year Of Magical Thinking (nonfiction) 2005
We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live (nonfiction) 2006
Blue Nights (nonfiction) 2011
South And West From A Notebook (2017)

The Archival Mind: Stories We Sometimes Weave From Our Memories

The 400,000 plus year old human brain, still by far the greatest super computer in the history of the planet, might even be more expansive than originally thought when it comes to information storage capacity according to an article published in 2016 by Scientific American. The article estimates the human brain to be somewhere in the vicinity of a quadrillion bytes; a hard number to get ones head around (pardon the pun). In other words, the libraries of the mind are well stocked.

Even though scientists will likely never know the full reach of the human brain, one thing is certain, everything we’ve learned, every experience, every conversation, taste, smell, sensation, kiss, book read, film watched, piece of music listened to… it’s all in there, stored away somewhere in the deepest caverns of our mind, and anything, anything at all, however induced, can float back to the surface of our consciousness in an instant resulting in a flood of fond memories, waves of euphoria, or profound sadness.

It is not uncommon for people who undergo hypnosis, or even Alzheimer’s patients to recall intimate details that took place when they were as young two or three years old. Every single thing we experience from the womb up to this very moment stays with us even though our memories may not always as reliable as we would like them to be.

I, for one, can sit in a quiet space, close my eyes, and recall a multitude of childhood memories and conversations that may or may not have played out just as I have for years remembered them. I know at least parts of what I remember to be true while others are a bit fuzzy and may have even been fabricated by my imagination. Just as we have the ability to block out whole swaths of painful memories, it makes perfect sense that we might also have the ability to alter them. Even the ones most important or precious to us.

For years I’ve had a memory of nearly drowning when I was about ten or eleven years old. It was a hot summer day. I was with friends and cousins taking turns jumping off of an old tire swing into the icy cold river below. Even back then I had a fear of going under. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it, but with everybody cheering and egging me along my fear of being a coward overtook my fear of the water and eventually I just did it. My first time in went beautifully. So well, in fact, I eagerly ran out to jump back in line for my next turn. I was having a blast. Just as I was getting very confident, however, on my third or fourth turn out my hands slipped off the rope before I was ready and I fell backwards into the water. I remember going under and having the wind knocked out of me. I couldn’t breath, and for a few split seconds I couldn’t find the surface. Next thing I knew, however, someone was pulling me up by the arm. Once I was back above the surface my cousin Patty was floating there in front of me asking me if I was ok. I nodded that I was fine. Truth be told, I was terrified. Since that day Patty and I have lost contact with each other more than once, and sometimes for years at a time. Recently we got into contact again. For the first time, I  just came right out and asked her if she remembered the day she saved my life. She seemed a bit confused. She said she remembers the day, she remembers us jumping off that old tire swing, but doesn’t recall a moment when I nearly drowned or of her saving me. I don’t think this is just her being modest. I think it’s quite possible she doesn’t remember it because it never really happened, at least not as I remember it. We were always very close when we were young. Not like brother and sister but more like best friends. Also I looked up to her. She was a bit older than me and a tom boy. I think there is a strong possibility that my mind conjured up this version because perhaps some subconscious part of me wanted her to be the hero who once saved my life. This possibility makes me question the details of all of my old memories a little more.

How many childhood or early adult memories can anyone claim to be absolutely sure of? As humans we all have an innate ability to create. Perhaps it begins with something as simple as our perceptions and branches out from there. Our minds never stop doing this, even while we’re sleeping that creative mind is hard at work. We have dreams and nightmares that can be incredibly vivid even if they don’t seem to make any sense.

Philosophers and mystics have for years and years believed that we actively participate, even if only subconsciously, in creating our own realities. Do we really? It’s an interesting theory that is rich with as many more questions as possibilities. But what if, just what if, we really do each have the ability to pave a future for ourselves from our own imaginings? Would there be anything we couldn’t do?

 

 

 

Unravelling Imagination By Rediscovering Curiosity

Albert Einstein once wrote: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

For those of us who have active imaginations (and we all do really, just some more so than others) this is a quote to cling to, live by, tirelessly defend, or maybe even wish we would’ve used on our teachers back in school when we were berated for daydreaming in class.

Imagination is a beautiful thing. At what point, however, did we surrender our childlike curiosity and imaginations to more narcissistic unearned certainties? In other words, when did we stop asking questions and begin formulating our own half-baked theories? When did we segue from what is possible to a more cynical belief system about things we hardly take the time to research much less understand? No doubt you are, have been, or at least know someone who fits this profile. We all do. In my case, this person was, and sometimes still is, me.

Back to Einstein again. “I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.” 

When I was a child I used to ask a lot of questions. Sometimes I’d get real answers. Sometimes if the people I was asking didn’t know the answers I’d get really bad guesses. Wrong answers. Seldom ever an I don’t know. Why?  Because most of the people I was asking were adults, and adults usually hate admitting when they don’t know something, especially to a child. I know this because I too grew up to become one of those adults.

I guess it’s just a natural stage of development we all go through when we try to at least pretend to know everything. I think it starts somewhere in our teens and carries us right on through our twenties and well beyond. We fiercely debate and defend our strong opinions and convictions even if deep down we suspect they might be wrong. We cloak ourselves in pride, become a little arrogant, and sometimes a lot obnoxious. And the worst thing about all of this is that we don’t even see it, but everyone else does.

“What a weird thing for someone to not know. The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.” You guessed it, Einstein again.

The older I get the more I feel I’m finally coming back full circle. I’m rediscovering my childish curiosity in big ways. I find myself asking more and more questions and reading more books and articles about things I never even knew I was interested in instead of operating on old assumptions because of being afraid of what someone might think of me if I don’t know the answer, even to a seemingly obvious question. I even question myself about deep-rooted beliefs I’ve clung to my whole life. Actually, I especially question those. Perhaps this is a natural progression too.  All I know is it keeps getting stronger as I grow older; this insatiable appetite to learn new things. If only I was half as enthusiastic about it when I was back in school I would’ve been a far better student and my teachers would have had a much easier time averting my eyes from the windows and back toward the blackboard.

As we each grow older perhaps we can take solace in this curious and pleasant thought that indeed maybe, just maybe, the older we get the wiser (and younger) we can become along the way as long as we never stop asking the necessary questions and seeking the uneasy answers they so often lead us to.