Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart was one of the finest actors in cinematic history. He made dozeof films in varied genres. My favorite four are listed below. 

Unlike Bogart's famous gangster movies, the first three are romances and the fourth is a comedy. An unexpected comedy.

1. "Casablanca" (with Ingrid Bergman)

2. "The African Queen" (with Katherine Hepburn)

3. "To Have and Have Not" (with Lauren Bacall)

4. "We're No Angels" (Bogart leads a trio of escaped convicts)

Have you seen any of these? What's your favorite Bogart movie?

No, that's not Humphrey; it's me as his most famous character on Halloween (Rick).

True Love

Tiny but powerful, my mother possessed influence. Barbara Jo managed both our family and a larger social circle. Her friends were charming people with exotic names, names no longer fashionable. Like Gertrude and Walter, Cliff and Muriel, Frank and Edith. Born in the 1930s these people prospered in post-War America. My favorite name among them was Willie Wenker, a German immigrant who founded a successful fuel oil company. Willie Wenker -- it slides out of your mouth as if poetry.

Barbara Jo felt fierce commitment to our family. After raising two boys my parents moved to Florida where they settled into a comfy new home. My mother's final years (1985-1991) were spent relaxing in well-earned leisure. During that period she regularly mailed me monthly checks, unsolicited gifts designed to ease my financial situation. It was the beginning of my law career and I could use support. 

My first legal job was found after a long, desperate search. My boss, an exploitive tyrant, paid me the least he figured he could get away with in tough market conditions ($10,000/year). I later discovered our secretary was making more money than I was.

The monthly gifts from my mother were appreciated. In addition to enabling me to enjoy a slightly better life-style her checks represented something else: reminder of her maternal love. Emotionally the mail erased geographical distance between us.  Envelopes arrived with the reliable frequency of a Swiss timepiece.

Near the end of my mother's life she struggled with physical pain from cancer. She never complained and refused to even acknowledge her illness. The only clue was her new wigs and turbans. Barbara Jo was stoic and strong to the end.

Checks from my mom were written in a steady hand -- the same hand that had cradled me as an infant, fed me as a child and led me through life. I viewed her steady hand as a pillar, something always there that could be counted on. As certain as the Sun rose in the morning, my mother's love existed and sustained me.

Then, suddenly, something happened. One day I casually opened my mail and saw a check written in shaky handwriting, manifestly unlike its predecessors. This check stopped me in my tracks. Looking at it I shuddered. The check's paper, account, amount and envelope were all same as usual but my mother's infirm hand betrayed her deteriorating health. I realized she couldn't really write any more and had slowly, painfully forced herself to spell out my name letter-by-letter in a heroic act of devotion. A last, significant act powered by sheer will. 

I'll never forget that check or its significance. Barbara Jo taught us to care deeply and be Herculean in our devotion to loved ones. I honor her by following that example and spreading her lesson. 

Riding Through The Storm

Have you missed me?

I've been struggling with my eyesight for the past five months. Initially my blindness was called a temporary, normal effect of illness. Later it was misdiagnosed by an optometrist as cataracts (which can be easily fixed). Then an ophthalmologist corrected that mistake and announced the condition is glaucoma, not cataracts. Glaucoma causes irreversible damage to the optic nerve and permanent blindness. 

Glaucoma has already destroyed all vision in my left eye. We're trying to save my right eye from the same fate. Five eye doctors are treating me, including specialists like a neuro-ophthalmologist and a renowned eye surgeon. 

I took powerful glaucoma medications for months. They had horrible side-effects: e.g., constant nausea, erratic sleep, digestive distress. I lost 20 lbs. and now need new belts.

The medication helped the glaucoma but not enough so I then began a series of eye operations. The first surgery (laser iriodomy) drilled two holes in my head. Literally -- the doctor used a laser-beam and drilled new holes in my head. That certainly wasn't on my Bingo card. The surgery helped a little but not enough. Glaucoma was still causing dangerously high pressure in my eye and threatening total blindness.

Last month I had two more surgeries in a single operation. One installed a drainage-shaft shunt in my eye-socket. The combined operation took over five hours and was excruciatingly painful. The surgeon kept me awake and used only local anesthesia. He did that so I could assist him by moving my eye during the procedure. He sewed fifteen filaments onto my eyeball to anchor the shunt. The pain was worse than anything I've ever expeerienced -- including the time I laid dying on a cold roadway twenty years ago after being knocked off my motorcycle by a reckless motorist. (During that trauma I struggled to breathe despite four broken ribs and a collapsed lung.)

In this operation the surgeon also removed my eye's natural lens and replaced it with a new artificial one. I was given official laminated cards for explaining to TSA/security in the future why I have multiple foreign objects inside my head.

Nobody knows how well these treatments will work. I'm trying to avoid despair and instead focus on re-building my life. There are many practical adjustments available to improve things.

I couldn't have made it this far without extensive assistance from Robin. She transports me to doctor appointments (2-3 each  week), puts drops in my eyes (5-6 each day) and leads me by the hand through grocery stores. Robin even learned how to help with cooking: she's now a talented sous-chef which surprised her as much as you. 

Poor eyesight makes everything difficult. At first I couldn't put toothpase on my brush and had to figure out a work-around. You're also vulnerable to injury from collision with poles, objects, pedestrians and moving cars. I have bruises to prove this. 

We never know what's ahead of us and life can sometimes become very hard. When it does the only choices are struggle or surrender. That's where I am today.

"How Good It Feels"

 

I know what it's like to be loved

I know how well it feels

I know what it's like to have someone to love

To share the air they breathe

And I know what it's like when they leave

I know what it's like to be young

I know what it's like to be free

I know what it's like to be out in front

I know what it's like to climb trees

And drop like falling leaves

I know what it's like to be hurt

I know what it's like to bleed

I know what it's like to be misunderstood

And know the truth concealed

...

I know what it's like to be lost

Crying in the swirling crowd

I know what it's like when a hand comes...

And lifts me off the ground

I know what it's like to be found...

- Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam (2023)

  "How Good It Feels" (Excerpt)

   

Cat Stevens

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. (Connect the dots.) I mean really listening to it -- as we did in the Seventies. Back then spinning vinyl was done with serious purpose: we treated albums as art and studied them closely.

Most of my current listening has been to half-century old vinyl but today is an exception. Months ago I pre-ordered the latest album by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam). It was released today and I got both digital and records versions

There are very few musicians whom I'll buy an unheard album from but Yusuf is one of them. His songs are magical, full of beauty and mysticism.

"King Of A Land" doesn't disappoint. Its songs are sweet and melodic with lyrics that are deep. Yusuf's voice is as strong as ever. You'd never guess he's 74 years old and that it's been 56 years since his first album. Yusuf spent a decade creating this collection of songs and that care shows. Critics (and I) are praising it as mature, interesting work.

On Life And Death

One of the great writers of our time, David Foster Wallace, delivered a highly influential speech in 2005. Three years later, when he was only 46 years old, Wallace killed himself. 

Wallace's masterpiece novel, "Infinite Jest," has been acclaimed one of the best novels of the last hundred years. Wallace and his work are universally lauded. A writing class is taught on his ouvre at Harvard, a literary Society and professional Journal are devoted to his writing and a movie was made about his life. When he was young Wallace tried but abandoned a doctorate program at Harvard because it bored him: Wallace explained that philosophy requires only "50% of his brain" whereas creative writing uses "97%."

So what did David Foster Wallace talk about in his famous speech? He advanced two important positions. The first is that our "default setting," installed at birth, is our natural but mistaken belief that we are the center of the universe. If we consider ourselves and our interests as the sole focal point of all experience, we miss seeing reality outside our heads. Wallace illustrates this and how it leads to distorted, numb existence.

His second position points a way out of this dilemma. "I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about 'the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master'."

French philosopher Albert Camus, of whom I've written in the past, believed the only true question for us is: why not suicide? "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide." Camus saw the question arising naturally as a solution to the absurdity of life.

Camus, unlike David Foster Wallace and most of us, witnessed the carnage and destruction of World War II first-hand. He fought the Nazis as a member of the French Resistance. If anyone was entitled to be a Gloomy Gus, it was Camus. Horrifying experiences inflicted existential despair on millions of war-time survivors.

Like Wallace, Camus was also widely admired. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Two years later Camus died: he was 46 years old, the same age Wallace was at his death.

I have no urge toward suicide. I confess that on dark days I sometimes lose the will to live -- but that's categorically different from actively extinguishing one's existence. I view life as too precious a gift, even when damaged by injured senses, to go to the Return Counter. I'll exploit my opportunity for experience, as limited as it now is, without moaning What Has Happened To Me? (the default setting Wallace warns us about). Let's see what the future holds for all of us.

Things You Don't Expect

I had two new holes drilled in my head this week. Literally. Two new physical holes were drilled in my head. Their purpose is to create drainage for circulating eye fluids.

This ranks among The Things I Never Expected. It joins removal of a chunk of my tongue (2018) and having a tube jammed into my chest (without anesthesia) to inflate a collapsed lung (2002). As Pee-Wee Herman says, "They don't teach you this stuff in school."

I could tell you about the laser iridotomy but don't have energy or enthusiasm for that. I've been sleeping all day and night since it happened Thursday. While I hope this will be the last eye surgery I need, that's unrealistic: I'll likely need more -- and that stuff is even worse. Right now I want to physically and emotionally recover before facing anything further.  

When I was a child my family ate dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. I was excited to get a fortune cookie that predicted I'd have "an eventful life." If only I'd realized...