“The comment may sound a bit whimsical, but it’s literally true that the leading cause of death on death row is old age.”

— Ronald M. George, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court.

I don’t know which is more interesting, that I knew that what Justice George says is true, or that I did not previously know his name.

WINDING PAPA’S CLOCK

If I were sitting on the red brick hearth

where my Grandma held me on her lap

in 1962, I could watch the old mulberry

recede into another dawn of valley fog.

I used to stand on that hearth and Papa

would let me wind his clock. Ten half

turns, more or less, clockwise for

the chimes and counter for the drive.

I talk to Grandma on the phone.

The tree is putting on new leaves

in all this sun, incessant rain.

Papa’s chair with slow electric lift is gone

from its place in the living room.

She visits him daily, says the nurses are

decent, but the clock has run down.

Kyle Kimberlin

April, 1998

This post is in response to this one on AllThatArises.

I saw on NBC evening news tonight that Tweeners, consumers between the age of 8 and 12, have become an alert driving force of the American economy. They are very aware of products and almost viscerally influenced by the media.

This is where the anti-war message needs to be directed. It’s too late for those any older; they’re already caught by the threads of their obdurate shrouds. The great wood-chipper of US has them, sure enough. But the young ones … not yet for them the coffins.

Maybe we can get SpongeBob to carry the message: If you don’t convince your parents to stop the war, you’re next. Same as it ever was.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on this day in 1770, and every year I remember this in some way, if only by a passing thought. Tonight, I’m listening to the Choral Symphony.

To me, Beethoven was one of the greatest geniuses ever, up there with Shakespeare and Mozart. But the man’s life absolutely sucked. He began going deaf around the age of 30, and by 32 he knew it was serious, progressive and incurable. He fell in love several times, but never knew the happiness of an enduring relationship. He lived in a time when being an artist meant being a plaything of assholes, not a star like today. He struggled to create, efforts to adopt the son of his dead brother became a torment, he became completely deaf and died at age 57.

Yet Beethoven wrote works of great passion, drama and joy. The world would be so much smaller and darker without his music. Happy birthday, Ludwig!

I don’t see how it can be so difficult to do this on the internets: [Sigh.] I have someone that I’m trying to stalk, and I can’t seem to find her. I’ve tried Google, phone and e-mail searches, alumni and reunion sites, maiden name search; everything I can get to without coughing up any money. I thought the Net was supposed to make it really easy (and free) to do just about anything of questionable motive and arguable turpitude. I can’t say I’m a happy little cyber denizen.

Well, it’s not stalking per se. It’s just that I used to know this person. We were friends and grew apart, I suppose. I haven’t talked to her in over five years. I don’t know how to reach her, don’t know if she’d appreciate hearing from me. Sometimes people just move on, you know? But it would be nice to have a phone number or something, even if I decided – as I probably would – that it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie.

It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

– W. Somerset Maugham

It’s very difficult for a single man and a single woman to be friends and just friends year after year. We were friends for about 10 years. That’s a growing apart best understood by the principles of plate tectonics, but apart we are. And it has troubled me. So every now and then I reach out into the troubled irritation of electrons that preoccupies my solitude, and hope for a still small voice willing to reply. So far, the answer is a chill and starlit wind.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

– Jessamyn West

I don’t know about this; I’ve got some pretty old and dear friends. I’ve never been willing to trade one for a poem or a story. And I love my family. Which probably explains why I’m a writer of far more talent than accomplishment. So it goes.

Today is Erik’s birthday, so don’t forget to visit him at All That Arises and buy a round or something.

Happy Day, buddy!

So Dad and I took his new model airplane – with remote control and four little propellers – to the park to fly it. He had another one, but this one is brand new.

click to embiggen

It made three short flights and crashed, snapping its styrofoam body in half. It lay there on the outfield grass in two pieces and he picked it up and did not cry. I wanted to do that for him, not for his hundred dollars but for the time spent in careful assembly, aligning the props, and for all the decades spent in countdown to flight that fell to disappointment. I guess if he’s not too old for such grief, sadly I am. But he deserved to see it soar.

I like a good legal battle on TV as much as the next person, if the next person runs screaming from the room at the merest hint of one of these sensationalistic tortures. Give me a Russian novel instead; make me read The Brothers Karamazov with a raging hemorrhagic eye infection. But in the name of mercy spare me the likes of Scott Peterson, OJ Simpson, and Robert Blake.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a doofus. I went to law school. Some of the legal issues, like venue, jury misconduct, evidence admissibility, were mildly interesting. But overall, this was just a grotesque, horrible, ghastly crime committed by a monster who deserves to rot not die. Death is too easy, though in any case he’s ours for the duration. He won’t do this again. Alas, the media, typically, exploited and hardboiled it into a nightly sideshow to compliment the War going on in the big top.

I feel terribly sorry for the families of Scott and Laci and Conner. No one should have to suffer losses like that. One side lost a daughter, the other a son, and both a grandson who should have brought them infinite joy. What an inconceivable waste of lives, an unfathomable burden to those left behind. But I will say the same thing about Scott Peterson that I said about OJ Simpson nearly a decade ago: If I never see that bloody sonofabitch on my tube again, it will be too soon.

[news link]

I’ve been working on a section in my novel that takes place at dawn, and was reminded of this from C.S. Lewis:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

OK, this is complete insanity. This war has gone from misbegotten, to wrong to evil, to entirely insane. They’re dragging people into it through the back door which one claw and shoving willing people out the front door – into prison for nothing worth mentioning – with another.

Yahoo! News

“I have learned violence makes no sense. Maybe it did once–as when we fought the Nazis–but it doesn’t make sense now. You wouldn’t hit anybody, would you? Neither would I.”

— the poet James Wright, whose birthday is today.