Original Sin

Original Sin

I often wish my life more complete

Sadly still, I rise each morn, see I have to work to eat

Instead I’d rather sit and think

How nothing matters, how life stinks.

Good God Almighty, you gave us paradise

And took it back in a trice.

The problem, You say, is original sin

I think the logic a little thin

What sin was mine to lose it all?

Was not the problem Thine, that caused man’s fall?

If an apple is a tempting fruit,

Knowledge is a loftier pursuit


I really ought to quit this silly quest,

But first I thought a final question

A plaintive plea from me to Thee

Blame Adam or Eve or the snake if you must

Dammit, why me, why make my life a bust?

Walk with St. Jerome

Walk 

If you are young and you are reading this, here is a scary thought – someday you will be married more years than not. To reach this dubious milestone, you will have to learn to work out the problems of living together. St. Jerome, best remembered for his bad temper, says, Solvitur ambulando, – “to solve a problem, walk.”

I have been married to my wife now more years than not. The kids are grown and we are too often alone. It seems like we are a little too quick to criticize, to complain about things that don’t really matter.

I acknowledge, I am the problem.

To solve my problem I follow St. Jerome’s advice – I walk. I load the two dogs up into the back of my GMC Yukon and off we go in search of solitude and adventure. Normal haunts include the old quarry pit at Lake El Dorado where Toby, a mixed Jack Russell Terrier and Mountain Cur, and I like to swim. Toby barks like a seal when he swims. I try to stay out of his way for I liken his constantly moving paws to the killer shark in Jaws. Sammy, a German Shepherd stays mainly on the shore. Sometimes, if it is really hot, she will daintily tread into the water and make a spin before returning to the shore.

There is also Pawnee Prairie Park on the west side of Wichita where we go to chase deer. The deer, flags raised are off in a flash. The dogs give futile pursuit but quickly tire and come back tongues lagging from their mouths.

Finally, there is South Lake where we go when time is limited. It has the clearest water of all the lakes, ponds, and creeks in and around Wichita. It has the disadvantage of being the most crowded spot and, sadly, the most trash, beer bottles, coke cups, and empty bait cups that fishermen and party-goers leave behind. In spite of the trash we still go. The clear water lures us and the hope of finding a kindred soul or canine.

On all of these sojourns, the two dogs and I will occasionally come across someone worth talking to. And if we are lucky, someone will have a dog or two for Toby to play with. Sammy is always leery of other dogs, and so she growls and barks for a time before settling down to an unsteady peace.

 Recently, the dogs and I changed the time that we would arrive at South Lake. In spring we went in the midday sun. Being summer now, we wait until the hour before sunset. It is cooler. It is also prettier. The setting sun casts colors of red, blue, and violet across the lake.

Half way around the lake we came across a pack of five dogs and their three owners. The owners, two women and a man, stood on the shore, while their five pets, ran to and fro. Being ever so polite I asked if we could join them for a while. Toby ran and swam and had a grand old time. Sammy growled and barked, but eventually found her manners. We spoke like strangers do, of dogs and the weather and sunsets.

“Walking is man’s best medicine,” says Hippocrates.

It was nice. The dogs got their walk and I had a moment without giving or getting criticism or complaint. And the sunset was gorgeous.

Dilly-dally

Dilly-Dally

The technical term for "dilly-dally" is reduplication - that is, a word that is repeated exactly or with a slight change. Babies say them, " mama, papa, no-no, bye-bye, choo-choo, night-night,  pee-pee, poo-poo." Even adults use them, "chit-chat, hokey-pokey, honey bunny." We repeat ourselves because we like to say, "I told you so."

Today we interpret the dilly-dally to mean, "To waste time, especially in indecision; dawdle or vacillate." See the FreeDictionary.

The OED dates the first use of the word from 1741, it showed up in a romantic novel, which is appropriate, but the word must have been in common use. In the 13th century, the French invented the word dalier, meaning "to amuse oneself,"quite possibly romantically, for the English created the word daliance, today's dalliance, to mean a romantic affair merely for pleasure.

detail of Salvador Dali, by Philippe Halsman, 1954

"Dilly" rhymes with "silly," and what is sillier than an old man who engages in a sad sweet dalliance that goes nowhere and ends badly. That makes him twice the fool.

Why Salvador Dali, you ask?

Don't dilly-dally Dali. Many of Dali's paintings showed a melted time clock, a symbol of the relativity of space and time.Then, there is the story of how Salvador was named for an older brother, also named Salvador, who died 9 months before Salvador was born. When he was a young boy, he was taken to the grave of his brother and told he was a reincarnation. That makes him a reduplication in my eyes.

Hay

Hay at Lake El Dorado Kansas

"Hay."

That's where I should leave it. Then one could interpret the image as a visual cue for a greeting. Or, a comment on the end of summer in Kansas. A mathematician would think of perspective, and a neural scientist the effect of color on the brain.

A poet would enjoy the image for what it is, beautiful.

Vanishing Point

Is reality what we perceive? Perhaps, reality has its own existence beyond our human ability to see and know, but, if so, how would we know?

a dusty Kansas road in Sumner County, Kansas, 2013

A vanishing point in a picture is a point beyond which we cannot see. An artist would understand that it is a matter of perspective. Perspective meaning how in space we relate to worldly objects. The artist observes that all longitudinal lines point to the vanishing point, a point beyond which nothing can be see. The horizon is, of course, the exception. It stretches infinitely in a 360 degree arc to our point of reference.

The old man was at the Lake of the Ozarks this last weekend with friends. The conversation gently moves from wine and women to the subject of string theory. Sting theory, in a nutshell, is man's attempt to understand how non-dimensional points become one-dimensional objects. The old man's friend attempted to explain string theory. So, we must begin with Einstein's famous equation E = mc(2) . "At some point," the friend explains, "matter disappears and only energy exists." "If this is so," says the old man, then,  "I can pound my fist upon the table until the energy's force creates matter."

All Men Are Created Equal

The history of civilization is brief. A scientific analysis of artifacts from a cave in South Africa reveals that man were carved bone tools, using pigments, made beads and even used poison 44,000 years ago. And a study of the nearly 2,000 figures of the more than 17,000 year old paintings of the Lascaux Caves in southern France, reveals symbolic dot clusters within figurative images that correlate with the heavenly constellations of Taurus, the Pleiades and the grouping known as the "Summer Triangle". But, if we limit our search to historic times apart from prehistoric times when "records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations" then we need not look further than 5,000 years ago when city-states arose in the Middle East along the Tigris and Euphrates, in the Indus Valley, and in the river valleys of China.

I say civilization is brief, for, anatomically, modern humans first appeared in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago.

We have come a long way, slowly. And, it is all the more remarkable to know that America has only been around for less than 300 years.

America is unique in the annals of human history, for it stands for the proposition that "All men are created equal".  This revolutionary idea certainly sounded good to the Founding Fathers, and to Thomas Jefferson, who included the phrase in the Declaration of American Independence.

American, and the ideal of equality, has been built generation by generation. We are a new breed, rooted in all races of the world, colored in all the colors of all the races, with all their varying creeds and beliefs - a sort of ethnic anarchy. I am reminded of this fact every time I take a taxi, driven by someone with an unfamiliar name, or visit a restaurant that offers up dishes from every continent, or walk down the main street America and see and hear someone who is unlike me. We are different, and from our differences we draw our strength. And yet, somehow in time, these differences become less and less, until we realize that we are more alike than we are different.

This fact, that, though different we are the same, comes to me every time I visit a school and watch the children of the many different races learning what it means to be American. It is the same process that countless American generations have gone thorough. And, so far, it has stood us in good stead.

All men, and women, are created equal. America is still working on this ideal.

Reality

The question has been around forever - "Does reality exist?" In other words, is there a world outside of our own thoughts?

Here today, gone tomorrow, but what happens to the world when we are gone? Does the merry earth continue to turn, the sun to rise, and the comedy and drama of life itself go on? To the self-absorbed, it doesn't matter. As for the old man, he hopes so.

Rene Descartes' simple declaration, "I think therefore I am," got enlightened philosphers asking the question anew. (Over 2,000 years ago, Socrates raised the question several times.) Descartes' original phrase was in French, "Je pense, donc je suis.", and appeared in his Discourse on the Method (1637). The phrase translated into Latin, becoming the familiar, "Cogito ergo sum."

The brevity of the Latin phrase has made the idea popular in W3estern Civilization classes in university campuses across the country. Of course, what Descartes meant by the five French words and the lesser three Latin ones, is what makes for a college course on philosophy.

So, if we take Descartes at face value, I exist because I am a thoughtful (and hopefully kind and caring) human being. But, what of the negative logical complement?

"I no think, no am I." I don't exist without thought. Of course, logicians would argue that Descartes only speaks to the individual, that the world goes on because there are other thoughtful individuals out there carrying on. And they might be right. But Descartes observed correctly that one can not vouch for others, only himself. Logicians themselves are illusions of rationality in an irrational reality.

The French were of course not the only ones to raise the question. Anyone of sane mind in any culture wonders from time to time whether this crazy world is real.

Across the English Channel, George Berkeley (1685 – 1753, titled Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne), advanced the theory he called "immaterialism", denying the existence of matter and suggesting that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas, and cannot exist without being perceived. As all graduates of western civilization classes know, Berkley was plagarizing in toto this idea from Socrates. Today, Berkley would be kicked out of university.

I have always loved Samuel Johnson's response to Bishop Berkley's suggestion. The reply is reported by Boswell in The Life of Johnson (1791). The argument is short and I reproduce it in its entirety:

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

Woody Allen made a joke of the question, “I hate reality but it's still the best place to get a good steak.”

All of this leaves the old man observing that some questions exist simply for the sake of argument (and college credit). Reality is a tough nut to crack. As with the day the World Trade Center was attacked by Al Qaeda, one wishes it all a dream. The same holding true for all natural calamities, epidemics, disease, personal difficulties, and death.