EPHEMERA

For a long time now, I've earned my crust of bread buying and selling thing which can be classified as emphemera - Vnctorian valentines, a 1920s oil company road map of Florida, a 1910 booklet of views of Los Angeles, a house plan catalog of 1950s ranch houses, a book of alphabets meant to be a reference for sign painters at the turn of the 20^th century, a circa 1900 catalog of chisels, hammers and rules.  Anything made of paper, including historical and vernacular photographs. By this time, other dealers know my specialization so it wasn’t unusual to get a call from a jewelry dealer in Palm Springs who had just bought from an old woman who said she had paper. It’s a long drive from Los Angeles, but the need for new stock is always pressing, and  I want the jewelry dealer to call me again if she comes across anything for me. I say yes without hesitation.

     Actually, I don’t mind the long drive. Being in the car, footloose at 70 miles an hour in the gorgeousness of Southern California, on the hunt for the big score (say, a Civil War photo album, with every soldier identified by name, rank and company, even better if they are Confederate rather than Union; this is an impossible dream) – it’s just about the best part of what I do. And there are antique malls and shops along the way – in towns with names that mean the West to me - Loma Linda, Yucaipa, Beaumont (“City of Antiques") and Banning. I stop at a few and find some things – an unusually nice tintype, a children’s picture book, a 1948 Renie street guide of Los Angeles. Not a bad haul.

     In Palm Springs, I have no trouble finding the house. It’s a 1950s ranch, shaded by an overhanging pepper tree, the kind of house I'm sure the next owners will update, introduce retro lines to give it the Palm Springs modernism look and, even though it’s on the far side of town, sell for twice what they paid for it.  I ring the bell and wait a few moments.  The door is opened by a woman who startles me; she’s thin and bloodless, so pale, I think immediately of a vampire visiting her nightly to feed. Small and delicate, about seventy and spry, with a very creased face, she’s wearing black tights, a flowing pink shirt and a wild paisley turban piled up high on her head.  I can’t see her hair but I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls down her back. She turns and I follow her in.  She has impossibly thin legs – for some reason, I think she may have been a dancer.  

     I’ve assumed she’s Mrs. Johnson, the woman who says she has paper.  But in fact, Mrs. Johnson is in the living room, a large old woman in a recliner, oxygen hose to her nose. She’s sitting still but I can feel the energy coming from her, the anxiety and irritability of someone in constant pain. I don’t need to be told she’s very close to death.  

     She waves me to a chair and I sit.  There are no introductions. For a moment, no one speaks and all I hear is the sound of the air conditioning and the oxygen machine.  I notice brown streaks on the wall behind her.  They must be paint but they look like feces; slowly it comes to me that there must have been something hung on the walls – mirrored tiles, a mural? – and what I now see is the glue residue. The carpeting is wall to wall and it's exactly the color of Astroturf. Artificial flowers are stuffed into huge vases; porcelain angels are every where.

     I've had a long drive and ask to go the bathroom.  The thin one looks confused, then leads me to a tiny room off the kitchen. It’s crammed with so many cartons I can hardly turn around. But when I do, I see the toilet – there's an old and rusted potty chair placed over it, the seat about six inches higher than the actual toilet.  I’m uncertain what to do but it doesn’t matter; when I try to lift it, it can’t be removed.  It’s dirty, as is the toilet beneath it.  I’ve been in so many houses and shops where people have apologized for the bathroom, but I’ve never encountered anything quite like this. Still, I’ve been in the car a long time and I have no choice. I’m not sure my urine will go into the bowl, but it does. 

     Back in the living room, no one makes any move to show me any paper.  The thin one brings out her costume jewelry to see if I want to buy it.  She’s holding out a big straw basket filled with dime store necklaces and pins and when I say it isn’t my sort of thing, she shrugs and disappears down the hall to the bedrooms. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t speak until the thin one returns, hopping as she pulls on slacks, struggling to get them over the tights.  It’s 105 out and she’s says she’s going to the market; maybe her thinness, the pale bloodlessness, makes her constantly cold.  Mrs. Johnson writes out a check for her. I’m still trying to figure out their relationship – friends, caretaker and patient, roommates? Mrs. Johnson tells me she’s already sold the house and is moving to a nursing home in Missouri to be near her son. The thin one, who hasn't left yet, says she’s staying in Palm Springs, that she’ll miss Mrs. Johnson because they’ve been together for many years. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t hear her, or ignores her, and I can see the thin one wants some kind of acknowledgement she doesn’t get, probably never gets. She jumps up and says she’s going to the kitchen and Mrs. Johnson asks for some of her chocolate stuff. This turns out to be a small can of Ensure.The thin one can’t read the label (where are her glasses?) and holds it out but Mrs. Johnson can’t read it either. I’m halfway out of my chair to help but she finally focuses.Yes, it’s the chocolate. The thin one picks up the check and leaves with no goodbye.

     The oxygen pump and the air conditioner drone on.  Mrs. Johnson says something about the move and her son, but she’s interrupted when a third woman comes through the front door.  She’s about fifty, with blond permed hair, a cotton shirt, shorts and tennis shoes.  Again, no introductions so I have no idea what her relationship to Mrs. Johnson is.  But when she’s told I’m the woman who drove down from LA, she goes to a bedroom in the back and brings back a wide dresser drawer; she says its the paper I’m supposed to look at. She puts it on the dining table (surrounded by three cabinets with china dishes neatly stacked and a whole new raft of angels). There are a couple of old Life magazines, a few snapshots, an old dance journal in very bad condition, some greeting cards from the Sixties and a few other uninteresting, which is to say, unsaleable things.  I’m very disappointed – it’s nowhere near enough to justify a two-hour ride.  Nonetheless, I offer $30 for the little I’m willing to take. I won’t lose money but I’m not sure I’ll make anything at all.  When I say goodbye, Mrs. Johnson flutters a wave; she’s still anxious and irritated, and I don’t want to think about what she has on her mind.

     In the car, I drive down the main drag in town. It’s so hot I don’t want to get out of the car, even to look through the antique shops I see. Anyway, this is Palm Springs – they’ll all have mid-century furniture with no paper at all.  

     On my way out of town, I drive up toward the mountain where the pricey houses are. Under the relentless sun, the streets seem lonely but cramped and crowded at the same time.  There’s new wood and glass and stucco, new yuccas and aloes and grasses wherever I look. I know if I drive around long enough, I'll find something of architectural distinction - but not today. Right now, this minute, I want to go home.  

     Months later, I come across one of the photos I bought from Mrs. Johnson. It's a black and white snapshot typical of so many I come across – a group of people at the beach, smiling at the camera.  I’m sure at one time there were many other photos, a whole album of them – the children, the pets, the new car, the trip to the lake. I can feel the emotion behind all these family photos – the pride of the parent snapping the baby in the cradle, the delight of catching the dog curled up with the cat, the attention paid to countless anonymous people posed in a driveway or against a bush in the backyard. Those moments are ephemeral, captured in a photo which will also become ephemeral, destined to wind up in the hands of someone who has no idea who or where the people are, the hands of a stranger.  

     I wonder about Mrs. Johnson and the thin one, where they are, and if they’re both alive. And I think about myself, about where I’ll be when I’m Mrs. Johnson’s age and who will be with me. I shudder at the thought that I may be alone. But after a moment, my mind moves on and I remember the mountains behind the houses in Palm Springs and the hills I skirted on the way to the freeway, rock and dirt a dusty gold in the summer light. They're a glimpse of the opposite of ephemeral; they will be here long after I and everyone I know is gone. Unexpectedly, I'm comforted. I'm connected to the natural order, and in the instant of that connection everything in me surges, expands, and before I even put it into words, I know the possibility of this connection and expansion is always with me, no matter what happens or doesn't happen in my life. I carry with me the memory of what connection feels like, and that memory, ephemeral, ungraspable, feels as solid as the golden hills. It's solid ground for me to stand on. I take a breath and  as I go back to whatever it is I'm doing, I know everything will be all right. 

INSIGNIFICANT/IMPORTANT

Many years ago, there was an initiative on the California ballot against nuclear weapons. No one thought it would have any effect, but it would put the state of California on record as being against the bomb. I hadn't paid much attention to the effort so I was surprised when one night I began thinking about the issue. What could be more important than trying to rid the world of weapons that could destroy the world? And with that question, I realized I should do something to get the initiative passed.
    I've never liked working with committees or groups. It drives me crazy when everyone talks at once or can't stay on the subject, not listening but wanting to be heard. Those kinds of groups rarely run a tight ship and I'm a tight ship person. This may mean that I'm controlling and want things to go as I say they should go. Well, there's more than enough evidence to make me confess that "may" isn't quite appropriate. 
     Nonetheless, I thought I should join the campaign. When I asked, what could be important, I felt a kind of moral evaluation taking place in my consciousness. If I really felt that few things took precedence over banning the bombs, how could I live with myself if I did nothing? Did I want to be passive and oblivious? As soon as I thought about it, I realized I'd be moving forward with the underlying sense that I had disappointed myself, chosen to be passive and oblivious, retreated into the familiar shadows which confirmed the worst judgments I made on myself. If I wanted to move into the future without this particular piece of baggage (there was always more inside to deal with), if I wanted to add to, or at least not take away from my very shaky self-esteem, it was clear what I should do. So, even though I knew my efforts wouldn't have any real effect, I found a group and gave some nights to stuffing envelopes and pasting address labels on them. I can't remember now how many nights I did that but I think I must have intuitively known how many were enough to satisfy that "I should do something." 
     I'm fascinated by that "should." We seem to be born with a moral sense. We know, if only unconsciously, what we think we should do, and if the gulf between should and what we actually do is too great, we know it. Those of us who aren't sociopaths may feel guilt which we can end by taking responsibility. We may spend needed energy on efforts of rationalization. We may simply know the particular feeling of letting ourselves down. We may just feel bad.
     If you want to know more about our moral imperatives, our ethics, you may as well start with Plato and Aristotle because there hasn't been a philosophy or religion or spiritual tradition that doesn't have ideas about right and wrong. It's one of the universal questions we ask ourselves. How do we decide what is right or wrong? How do we justify the choices we make? If you want to know more, vast, vast libraries will be happy to provide fodder for pondering for years to come.
     I did some work for the ban the bomb initiative even though I knew my actions, and the actions of many others, would have little effect. Gandhi said, "What you do may be insignificant but it is very important that you do it." Live up to your higher nature. Act free of expectations; do not pin your actions on the end result. We have no control over how the world receives our efforts. So do what enlarges you here and now and the rest will take care of itself.
     

DYLAN'S COHORT, AND MINE

Statisticians and demographers often use the term “cohort,” to mean a group of individuals who share a common characteristic. It can be economic level, years of education or just about anything else that can be measured. By the measurement of age, Bob Dylan and I are in the same cohort.  I’m a couple of years younger but the Age of Dylan is my age as well.

When I heard that he’s won the Nobel Prize, I realized that for a while now, what I mean by “Dylan” has undergone a change. For years, I meant the Dylan of the beginning, when we were young, and he caught the perfect wave of those early Sixties changing times. Music burrows into us, sets up its banners and tents, a permanent encampment, and stirs us in a way no other art form can.  For someone like me, a fan who never became a fanatic, those songs mean something more than “Dylan.” They’re my own personal worm hole  – just a few opening chords and I’m back in the time of my time, all youth and optimism, when, Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven! Time has shown we were naïve about how easy it would be to change the world, but it’s also shown that we were right – about civil rights, being against the war, all war, and the values of what came to be called the counter-culture. The authenticity of our ideals is still there in the authenticity of the songs.

But beginning about ten years ago, around the time our cohort was more or less on the line of sixty-five, another “Dylan” began to take shape. That year, I found myself buying Modern Times, the first album of his in years that I actually paid money for. I wanted it because it was evidence that after all these years, with a lifetime of all kinds of experience, Dylan is still the real deal. He’s still at it, fifty years later committed to doing the work he was meant to do with the energy to keep turning out some of his best songs. I’m continually surprised by how much that means to me. But that’s the Dylan I’ve come to love, the one who has stayed righteous and true, the one who is still going strong.

 Dylan has always hated strangers assuming they know who he is; he hates being a symbol for anything or anyone. But he must know it’s unavoidable. I’ll use another word. Representative. Dylan is a representative of our cohort, our generation. He represents our tribe, and more than represents; he’s completely embedded in our own thinking about ourselves. That must be why, when I heard about the Prize, I felt as if we’d all won it, felt it as an acknowledgement and validation of our own particular Age, of who we were at the beginning, what we’ve been through, and who we are now.  

For years, Dylan has been on the Never Ending Tour, playing for thousands of people, hiding in plain sight. He’s the Lone Ranger, drifting into town to do some good and gone before you know it and you’ve never even seen his face. Of course, the Tour eventually will end, as will all our own private tours. That fact is always there, a slow train moving closer as it ambles down the track. Well, even though it’s getting there, it isn’t dark yet. There’s still energy to do work, make connections and find our own meaningful metaphors. There’s time to give and feel love. Time to keep going strong. Of course, there’s only one wish for us in that time. May we stay forever young.

MOBY DICK;: OBSESSION

"The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' bed, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way."    -- Herman Melville, MOBY DICK. 

This is from one of Ahab's extraordinary soliloquies, extraordinary not only because it's Shakespearean in quality but because it reveals Ahab's insight into him-self. In a sense, he's doubly cursed - with the misery of his obsession with the white whale and also with his utter clarity about his helplessness before it. "I am demoniac, I am madness maddened...grooved on iron rails..."  This madness will literally drown him, take down his ship, the Pequot, and all of his crew except Ishmael who alone is left to tell the tale. 
     To be in the grip of obsession is to be powerless and locked away from the world. It's to be a dog pulled on a very short leash, not only jerked forward but jerked anywhere the obsession chooses to take us. It's to be run on cold harsh iron rails that thunder through any obstacle and prevent any diversion. "Run" is more than a metaphor. In the midst of obsession, we are driven by a force that seems to come from outside and eats up our will. We completely lose ourselves. 
     There are some positive obsessions: the scientist in search of an answer, the artist driven to express something she may not even know she is trying to say. We admire these "creative" obsessions, though you hear many stories of solutions coming only after taking some kind of break - doing a crossword, going for a walk, falling asleep.  Ahab's suffering is of a whole different order. He's caught on rails he knows are leading him to destruction. 
      There may be some people who haven't felt some version of this, but I'm not one of them. I've been obsessed and I know what it feels like, the relentless need to focus over and over again on the object of obsession to the exclusion of everything else. I've felt the desperation that is part of obsession and the misery that comes from feeling powerless to get out from under its iron grip. 
     Over the years, though, I've learned a few things about how obsession works in me. I've learned what it feels like in my body - my pulse races and it's as if there's a motor revved up inside me, grinding with an intensity that tears at my chest and throat. When I remember to focus on those symptoms (which is no easy thing, by any means), I'm taking a step back, turning my attention from the object of obsession to the feelings it produces in me. That step creates distance been myself and driven thoughts of obsession. It begins a process of rediscovering my ability to choose my thoughts and focus, and to let go of an object I was so desperate to have.  
     As I've gone through the process time and time again, I've become more able to recognize when I'm beginning to get on those iron rails and how to help myself get off. But I don't think I'll ever be free of the possibility of being driven to have something I believe I absolutely need to have. I'm human and the mind wants an object to keep it busy. The miracle is that, through experience, I've learned I can watch that busy mind and work to let it go.

A TASTE OF HONEY

I sometimes find myself in an Ozymandias moment, thinking about our misguided belief that the more power we accumulate, the greater the monuments we construct, the more we will be guaranteed some kind of immortality. "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" In Shelley's poem, those words are carved on a fallen pedestal, half buried in obliterating desert sands. That is the irony, that despite our boasting and pretensions, our arrogant belief that what we build will signify lasting fame, through time and the unfolding of history, everything can, and probably will, be brought low. 
     There are times, though, when the poem leads me in another direction, something quite the opposite of arrogance and futility. I think about the fact of death, that we all know we are walking toward it, and the likelihood that all we are and have and know will be covered over by those shifting sands. And even so, and nonetheless, we do build and look for the meanings of history. We project vast systems of beliefs and morality. We create art . We procreate, we cultivate compassion, we sacrifice, and above all,  we love. 
     It's that I come back to again and again - the grandeur of the human spirit, our capacity to create the deepest meanings right along side our knowledge of what's coming, to find and believe in those meanings despite our knowing that death is ahead.
     Tolstoy tells the story of a man who is being chased by a dragon. The man sees a well and jumps into it, thinking to save himself. But by the time he's already falling, he realizes there's a monster at the bottom waiting for him. He grabs at a branch growing out of the wall and hangs on to it, between the dragon above and the monster below. Soon the man notices there is a white mouse and a black mouse nibbling away at the base of the branch, and he knows that sooner or later the branch will give way and he will fall. But then he notices there is a drop of honey on one of the branch's leaves, and despite the certain fate the man knows awaits him, he reaches out to lick the honey. 
     There it is, our glory: we reach for the honey.

KRISHNA AND ARJUNA

I came across some lines from the Bhagaved Gita, the Hindu book that Gandhi loved and read throughout his life. The god Krishna appears to Arjuna, a warrior who on the eve of battle suddenly becomes reluctant to go to war. The enemy army is a clan in which Arjuna has many relatives - how can he bring himself to kill them? On the other hand, if he doesn't fight he is leaving his own army without a leader and they will killed by the enemy clan. Krishna urges Arjuna to fight but Arjuna says that will bring bad karma to his soul. Krishna says there is a way to avoid this karma. "It is not possible not to act. But it is possible to act without creating karma. One does this by performing all action without hatred or desire. Be intent on action, not the fruits of action....Action imprisons the world unless it is done as a sacrifice. Free from attachment, perform action as a sacrifice."
     This is undoubtedly one of the sections non-violent Gandhi loved, in this book that is ostensibly about going to war. Krishna is saying that you must detach from anger and hatred and not focus on whether your actions succeed or fail. Think only of the importance of acting.  "Action imprisons the world"...action that is all about success and failure, and your own needs and expectations, action that comes out of ego, can only lead to pain and suffering. Let go of attachment. Become selfless in the sense that your actions aren't attached to your ego - they're focused on a higher power and performed for a greater good. "Perform action as a sacrifice."
     Selflessness and self-sacrifice - they are among the ideals we value the most. They're universal and at the heart of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. They're as highly valued in the secular world. We admire the person who rushes into a burning building to save a child or the person who performs an act of kindness without desire for thanks or acknowledgement. We admire actions that are detached from self-interest. The first section of Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search For Meaning, is a memoir of his time in a concentration camp. He says, "The best of us did not come back." The ones who, even in that inhuman world, managed to care for others, or shared what little food they had, those who sacrificed their own survival - they are the best of us.
     In the camps, survival often depended on a person's ability to remain intact, grounded in a deep sense of self and one's humanity, which was the very thing the Nazis wanted to exterminate. This gets to another wonderful paradox: only those with a strong, secure sense of self can act selflessly and be ready to sacrifice. When you are deep in ego, when your sense of security depends on the outside world, you are too bound up in self to think of another; desires and demands, needs and expectations block out the light of compassion for the world and the desire to connect with something or someone beyond yourself.
     Finally, Krishna tells Arjuna to focus all his actions on him. In this, he is the universal god who says in many traditions and languages, "Give all your doubts, pain and suffering to me. Focus on me and you will expand yourself." 

GLAMOUR

     I like to take long drives and one of my favorites is heading north on the 5 freeway, then turning off at the 126. The road runs east and west and goes through the Sespe Valley. It's a narrow valley with low hills I feel I could touch and that makes me feel cozy and protected. The valley is beautiful, especially driving east to west. Everything is green - the miles of orange and avocado groves, the flowers grown for commercial use, other fruits and vegetables, many of which are sold at two big fruit stands along the road. Los Angeles is very far away. The road goes all the way to the ocean at Ventura but I usually turn around before that, at Santa Paula, which I think of as the town that time forgot. The main street looks as it must have fifty years ago; gentrification is not a word spoken here. Sometimes I stop and have some tacos but usually I just drive through slowly, making sure nothing has changed.      

    One day, as I was leaving the 5 for the 126, I noticed a motorcycle and its driver pulled over to the side of the road. He was sitting on the bike, dressed all in black leather and just as I was passing him he pulled off his helmet and shook out long blonde hair. My god, I thought, the quintessential California image - man, motorcycle, black leather, blonde hair. Then I thought, no, it isn't just a California image - anyone anywhere would respond to him. For the moment it took me to pass him, he was Brando and the Hell's Angels and the two guys from Easy Rider and Harley Sunday drivers - everyone who has ever hit the road on two wheels heading somewhere else.

     I thought about him as I drove on. Was he just taking a break and by now was back on the freeway, heading north or south? Was he somewhere behind me; if he was, I didn't see him. I didn't want to meet him; I wanted to gaze at him, to be in the presence of the charisma I felt in an instant. As I kept picturing him, I realized I was feeling a kind of awe, low grade but real, the kind that makes you feel you're connected to something important. Then it came to me, a word - glamour. He was one of the most glamorous images I'd ever seen. Glamour means allure, it instills fascination, it has a mystique. It compels us to stare. The motorcyclist had the glamour of the loner - the cowboy riding the range, the detective going down mean streets alone, the surfer riding the face of towering waves with ease and grace, the motorcyclist pulling over to the side of the road and shaking out his long blonde hair. 

     All of those images suggest courage, a nonchalance in the face of risk. There's a reason they've become iconic - they touch something primal in us, the desire to test ourselves, to go it alone, to ride into the unknown. I may not have the chance to do that anytime soon but, gazing at the motorcycle rider, I sense what it must feel like. His glamour comes from knowing it first hand.