Magic Mountains or My Eyes Are Up Here

"[O]ne Suday evening in the salon after supper, the consul made a discovery, thanks to a black, very low-cut sequined gown: Frau Redisch had very feminine, soft, white, close-set breasts and a cleavage visible from a considerable distance. And this discovery had stirred the mature, refined man to the depths of his soul, thrilling him as if this were a totally new, unexpected, unheard-of phenomenon."

Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain

This cracks me up for several reasons. Erste, the formality of the language is just a perfect way to express a crude thought. A considerable distance indeed! Zweite, the idea that underneath all the superficial decoration, we men are just mobile boners. And dritte, it's just so true. Totally ridiculous, but true nonetheless. 

The efficacy of prayer.

I seem to have become a praying man. It's not that I had an epiphanal conversion or that I have deep faith or strong religious convictions . . . though I have to admit that I often wish that I did. It's more that I needed to talk to a self that is greater than my self. So I started talking to Jesus. Before I go to sleep at night. When I wake up in the middle of the night (which is almost every night.) When I wake up again in the morning (if I've managed to go back to sleep after the middle of the night wake-up--about 50 / 50 on that one). 

Praying with Jacqueline and Joe paved the way, I suppose. (Though those long ago years from kindergarten through the sixth grade at Emmanuel Christian Day School probably had something to do with it.) With Jacqueline, we say separate God blesses and then The Hail Mary and The Lord's Prayer together. We sing the "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever a-men" part. With Joe, I just watch as he says a quiet-bordering-on-silent prayer. Both pray with candles--though Jacqueline needs six while Joe only has one. 

But that ended up not being enough. And I kept thinking about this little story in a book one of my friends had given me, about a kid who would duck into his church on his way home from school and say, "Hi, Jesus, it's Timmy." And not much else. Just checking in. I loved that story. So I started praying (or "praying") that way at night. "Hi, Jesus. It's Thomas." And I would think about what was on my mind. And I'd identify things that I was grateful for. It didn't really feel like praying, and I didn't really think of it as a serious thing. Maybe just a way of talking to someone before I go to sleep since I've given up on girlfriends.

But it became important and natural for me to do. In fact, I don't really even think about it anymore, I just slip right into it.

I've read some things about how when a group of people prayed for a person who was sick--even when that person didn't know that s/he was being prayed for--that the person sometimes got better. And I've read about the religious shrines that people go to, and how people who were crippled leave their wheelchairs behind, etcetera. And I can't help but think that it's not totally bullshit, you know? Probably mostly bullshit, but 100% bullshit? That seems like bullshit to me.

And the older I get, the more I am sure that I don't know so much about life, the universe, and everything, and the more inclined I am to say, "Maybe."

And with Jacqueline and Joe, when they ask me about people or even animals who have died, and they ask me if they are in heaven, I don't even hesitate before I tell them that they are, and that when I die I'll be in heaven, and that I'll be watching over them and will greet them when they die and go to heaven. I guess that's kind of like telling them that Santa Claus is real to some folks . . . maybe even to myself, I'm not sure . . . but I don't care about that. To me, it's a way to give my kids some comfort and an ability to deal with one of the great horrors of life.

And it does that for me, too. There are times when I think about dying, and it just scares the living shit out of me. I feel desperate, like I'm clawing my way up the living room wall, or falling off of a very high ladder, or drowning in viscous fluid. And if I allow myself to think, "But this isn't the end of my existence," I start to feel like I can breathe again.

It's kind of a slight variation on Pascal's Wager. But more of a win-win situation. If I believe that there is an eternal life for me and I die and there is an eternal life, then that's lovely. And if I believe that there is an eternal life for me and I die and there isn't an eternal life, then I don't know it because my consciousness has been obliterated.

Of course there's always the HELL box on the flow chart . . . but that is one thing that I have no problem in dispensing with, despite years of Christian conditioning and Dante and Milton. It's just so fucking stupid, you know? There'd be no point to it at all. (Now Purgatory I could go for. A chance to work off your shittiness.) But a God who would create eternal punishment for people who didn't measure up to His standards in life . . . especially taking into account what we now know about human behavior and genetics and societal conditioning and etcetera . . . well, that would be like punishing sharks for eating chum, wouldn't it? And if there is a God, I don't believe that S/He could be stupid or cruel (by definition), ergo no Hell.

So I pray. It might not help, but I don't see how it can possibly hurt.

Cool Quotes I Never Got Around to Writing About

"Why do people marry versions of their controlling mothers? Or absent fathers? To have a shot at righting old wrongs. Fixing things as an adult that hurt you as a child. Maybe it doesn’t make sense at a surface level, but the subconscious marches to its own beat."

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

"I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass."

"The long years had ground away all the hardness and fierceness in their personalities, until all that was left was a gentleness like that of water."

" . . . . a person’s ability to discern the truth is directly proportional to his knowledge."

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past) 

by Cixin Liu

"i want the youtube gets fix"

Typed into the Google search box by Joe when our internet went down

A Cure for Mountain or The Magic Wellness

I am starting to get all geeked up for this A Cure for Wellness thing. Which is probably not a good thing in that (1) anticipation often seems to raise the expectation bar and raised expectations often lead to disappointment, and (2) it's still about three weeks away from opening night, and that's a long time to maintain an erection. But on the other hand, my desire to see the movie has also spurred me on to get back to reading The Magic Mountain, which I really have been enjoying, so that's a good thing.

Anyway . . . .

In addition to a very exciting trailer, the movie promo people have released 3 two and a half minute "meditation" videos to help us achieve wellness--one for water, one for air, one for earth. I don't know what happened to fire. In the last of these videos, the mediation guide tells us to " . . . embrace the meaninglessness of your wasted existence . . . . " I've got to admit that that makes me a little bit happy. I know that that's kind of sick, but maybe it's just a misery loves company thing.

Jim Kalb (the First)

On your right.

In the middle.

I guess it's always startling to look at pictures of your parents when they were kids--so to speak. My dad was in his late teens in these pictures. Traveling the world with the U.S. Navy. Drinking it up. He looks like he was having fun. I hope so.

He died of lung cancer in 1984, about a month short of his 60th birthday. He never got to retire to the small farm he'd bought in Washington Country. He only got to see one of his grandkids . . . and there are now six. I often think about how he'd love all of them, but I am pretty sure that my sassy little autistic daughter would really be his cup of tea. Both of them are shoot from the hip and ask questions later people, which can be a delightful thing--especially if you're not the target.

I started to keep a journal when I hit my 59th birthday in August, 2016, intending it to be a little book about my 59th year just to put things into perspective for myself, and maybe gain a little insight into my dad's last year on the planet. But I've had a hard time keeping up with it. For one thing, retired life as a full-time writer (at least theoretically) has not been bliss-filled, and I'm finding myself stalling out, wondering if it's a thing worth doing anymore. I've been waiting for over two years to hear back from McSweeney's on a story I submitted to them, and have had 13 other pieces rejected. And let's just say that the two pieces I've put up on Amazon Kindle (a short story and a novel) are not selling like hotcakes at present. And the last book review I had published was in the winter of 2014. (And I think that was my last review, too, as I'm not feeling the need to do that kind of thing anywhere other than right here these days.) 

Which kind of brings me back to my dad. Maybe it's about not being able to reach your dream, even though you see it clearly. Or maybe it's about running out of steam, just not having it in you to keep pushing so hard.

I remember going up to the farm with dad one weekend. I hate to say it, but I didn't do that very often. My sister Mary was much more dependable--and more skilled--than I ever was. But on one of the times I went up with him he wanted to dig holes to put in a fence. And I was so confident of my strength that after he showed me how to do it, I went at it like a madman, pounding the post hole digger into the earth for all I was worth. And dad said, "Take it easy and just go steady. Anybody can make the fur fly for a minute." And of course I thought, What does he know? Until a minute or two had passed, at which point I had to stop because I was exhausted.

Yep.

When my first child was born, I named him James after my father. Whose name wasn't James. He was born Clarence Franklin Kalb, Jr. But that was way too much for the mouth of country folks, so he was always known as Jimmy. In fact, when he got a gold pen from UPS for something, it was inscribed Jim Cobb. And my mom always called him Jimmy. He was about as far from a Clarence as anybody I've ever met or heard of.

On another visit to the farm, dad wanted to cut down thorn trees. One of us would pull the branch out so that the other could cut it, and then we'd trade off. When I was cutting one of them dad slipped and let go, and a large thorn buried itself in my wrist. It didn't hurt all that much, so we just went on working. When I got home I tried to pull out the "splinter" with a needle, and when that didn't work I tried using a seam ripper. To no avail. My oldest sister, who was a nurse, told me I needed to get it surgically removed, and apparently she had enough pull to sneak me in for a minor operation. When they pulled the thorn out of me it was a couple of inches long . . . almost long enough to have pierced my wrist all the way through. I still have a little scar from it.

That was the last visit to the farm I can remember making, so maybe it wasn't all my fault that I was such a bad son.

That doesn't make me feel any better about not being supportive of dad, though, for sure.

Which reminds me of when I went to see a spiritualist because I wanted to see if I could talk to my sister Kate (the aforementioned nurse) after she had killed herself. Not that I really believe such things are possible. I just didn't want to leave unturned stones. And after I'd "talked" to Kate--and was not at all convinced that that is what had happened--the spiritualist asked me if there was anyone else I wanted to talk to. So I said I would like to talk to my dad. And she said that she saw him sitting beside a river, smoking a cigar and fishing. And that there was a dog beside him. My dad did like dogs (we were never without one when I was growing up) and I'd known him to fish, but I don't think I ever saw him smoke a cigar. Though he did smoke cigarettes when he was young, and was still occasionally smoking a pipe when I was old enough to remember buying him Father's Day presents (invariably a new pipe or a pouch of  Half and Half tobacco). So maybe he'd have a cigar in heaven. The spiritualist asked me what I wanted to say to him, and I said, "I'd like to tell him I'm sorry that I didn't spend more time with him." And the spiritualist said that he replied, "Payback is a bitch!" Which certainly sounded like something my dad would say. And surely every parent has that Harry Chapin Cat's in the Cradle moment at some point. So maybe.

My dad liked to say, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it weren't for your asshole, your belly would bust."

And once when I asked him about some family troubles that we were having between my new wife (number one) and my younger sister, his advice was, "The more you stir shit up, the more it stinks." 

Come to think of it, he'd have really liked my second ex-wife, too. (As did I, I don't want to fail to mention.) Also, a weird coincidence. Her first and middle names were Clare Francesca. Clarence Franklin. Pretty close, right? And one of the therapists I went to (after Clare left and I lost my sanity) told me that the voice I was hearing from Clare was my father's. Which was bullshit, but was still kind of interesting. Or at least is now. At the time, it wasn't all that interesting. Actually nothing was very interesting at that time.

Except my kids. My kids have been the primary focus of my life ever since the first one (Jimmy) was born. When people find that my youngest children are both autistic, they often comment that I am an angel or some such thing of like ilk, which is well-intentioned, I'm sure, but absolutely ridiculous bullshit. The truth is that I would not be able to live without my kids, and that our days are primarily full of joy and laughter. I love all three of them dearly. Jimmy has moved away and has a life of his own, so I don't get to interact with him as much as I'd like to these days (Little Boy Blue and The Man in the Moon), but Jacqueline and Joe are with me at least four nights a week, and we read together and say prayers together and watch television shows and movies together and go to the YMCA together and etcetera etcetera etcetera, and those are the best minutes of my life. 

And I know that my dad loved me, so I hate to say this, but it's true: I can't remember him ever saying, "I love you" before he got sick. And I can't remember him ever hugging me. And there are no pictures of him hugging me. Or holding me when I was a baby. Those were different times, of course, and that's no doubt a part of it. It makes me miss him even more, though. It makes me wish that we had had more together.

For one of his birthdays I gave him two Kurt Vonnegut books: Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons and The Sirens of Titan. I don't remember why I gave him those books, other than that I loved Vonnegut dearly and thought that my dad would think he was funny. But my dad wasn't really a reader. My mother told me later that he'd said to her, "Tom must think I'm pretty smart" because I'd given him those books, though. And he did think they were funny. I remember how he'd read a sentence from The Sirens of Titan that particularly cracked him up: "The stake was nineteen feet, six and five thirty-seconds inches high, not counting the twelve feet, two and one-eighth inches of it embedded in the iron." For some reason that extreme specificity was really funny to him.

When he got sick, I gave him one of my novels to read. I can't remember if he'd asked to read it or if I asked him to do it. When he finished he said that it was pretty good, but that he'd have "said some things differently." I didn't have enough sense (or maturity or wisdom) to take that as anything but an insult, unfortunately, so I left it there and didn't show him anything else I'd written. 

Man, I miss my dad.