I am read by robots

Made an unnerving discovery today.

You remember I said that no one may be reading my blog? Well, I went back to the blog's dashboard and checked to see if it had any "comments." That is, I looked to see if anyone who had read the page had left remarks.

I was startled to find that there were far more comments than I'd thought. Several of my entries appeared to have been quite popular. It was amazing and I was delighted.

But, then I went and looked at the comments themselves. Some were real. I mean, some had been clearly left by real people who had really read the pieces and had some remark to make.

However, the vast majority were no such things. They were left by marketing software designed to search the web for any blog, post a canned comment to one or more of the entries ("Great Blog!") and then conclude with a link to some commercial site. ("Oh, and visit my webpage, 'IncreaseTheSizeOfYourPenis.blognot.XXX).

Thus I find that I may be read, but mostly by spambots.

Ah well. Maybe it is fitting. We see reports of how more and more news and non-fiction is being written by robots.

Maybe it is only fair that the audience, too, should be synthetic.

A letter from Hobbes

My small concern with the New Mexico Department of Revenue worries me for no good reason. I am simply a person who, well, worries.

But the other issue is that this comes on the heels of the death of my mother. Among the many things that astonished me was the vast number of forms that had to be filled out afterwards…and the amount of misinformation that comes from seemingly knowledgeable sources. We were told, for instance, that we had to phone the happy folks at Social Security to tell them my mother had passed and to find out where we should mail a copy of her death certificate.

Forty-five minutes waiting on hold later, I learned that there is no such requirement so long as the funeral home staff has notified the agency by electronic means. Which they had done. Which meant I had wasted my 45 minutes.

So it is that the letter from the tax people looms particularly large for me. It is a symbol for the System…

Not exactly Hobbes' Leviathan, but dreadfully near, and rumbling on…all seeing yet not seeing…

Perceiving everyone. Believing all to be in error or in sin. Crushing the unrighteous beneath its armored treads.

When, in fact, it alone is unrelieved in its ignorance.

Minor things...death and taxes

Small things have troubled me for the past few days. I've got tax troubles. The state of New Mexico is refusing to process my return. On what grounds I cannot understand. As near as I can make out from the (somewhat ominous) letter they've sent me, I think they think I am no longer a resident of the state.

But why? My correct address is on the return.

I fear it may be because I use a New England-based accountant and they assume that if he is in New Hampshire, I must be too.

Ironic. One of New Mexicans' fondest complaints is that ignorant Easterners don't realize that we are part of the United States of America.

Now we have the reverse. I am here. But the New Mexican government declines to believe it is so.

I have sent a copy of the letter to my accountant. I will let you know what we learn in due time.

Letters to the Wind

I consider beginning Xcargo the Blog again. I am not quite sure why. It has very little readership…nothing like the following Explosive-Cargo the ezine had…and I wonder sometimes if the whole blog scene isn't on the way out. There was a time when it was the means of self-publishing. But, now, so much of the web has been co-oped by the Great and the Powerful, and smaller voices (like mine) tend to be drowned out.

Yet I begin again. Partly that's simply because I (for once) have the time to do so. The past two years have been busy to say the least. The move here, the days watching my mother in various stages of unconsciousness, dealing with my father's smaller but real health problems, trying to start "the business," these and other things have consumed most of my waking hours.

Now I have a little space to breathe and to write.

But also I begin Xcargo because I wonder if it isn't what I'm made to do. If it isn't what my talent is…assuming I have any talents at all. I wonder if I am the sort of writer known as a "diarist."

Perhaps this is what I am meant to write. Perhaps I am destined to pen these small things, these moments in my life, half remembered, uncertainly told, offered up to a reader who may not exist. Who may never exist.

Well, there are worse callings. There is even something romantic in it. Like the poet who wrote letters to his vanished beloved and cast them to the winds.

To be received… by whom? By no one. By the world. Either one. It makes no difference.

Quick notice

To all my FB friends, B&B contributors, Xcargo readers, etc. Thanks so much for your support these last few weeks.

My mother passed away peacefully this morning at about 6 a.m. local time.

It is hard, of course, but we console ourselves in knowing that she had a long, full life that included some remarkable adventures. She grew up in the Depression-era south, married my father and came to New Mexico, got her Ph.D. in middle age, traveled the world, and, as a hobby, repaired homes and office buildings with my father as part of their real estate business.

Rather amazing woman. I am proud to be her son.

To the doctors we go (hi ho, hi ho)

We woke this morning with all the aches you expect post-car crash. Martha was actually in serious pain and when I suggested that she make an appointment to see her doctor, she did not object.

I then drove over to check on my Dad. He, too, hurt badly. I asked him if he would let me take him to the Doctor and to my amazement he actually agreed. (He must be really uncomfortable.) A short time later I had the two of them at Urgent Care. Much prodding and poking followed and finally they reappeared with the news that nothing was broken (cheer) but that Martha had bruised ribs and a sprained foot while my father had strained and bruised muscles in his chest (not so cheer).

I then took Dad to the Home where he could visit Mom while Martha and I went to make arrangements to have the car towed from a temporary lot to the place where it will be repaired (we hope).

After that, I took Martha back to the apartment where she has been sleeping most of the day. Around three, I picked up Dad and took him home. I suspect he will sleep rather well too.

As for me, I'm the least damaged of the three of us. I was farthest from the impact. I do have a bit of pain in the left arm, but I trust that will past soon enough.

Have you noticed? Life is just too damn complicated.

My day so far

The important thing first: we are all fine. A little bruised and battered, and we've all got muscle aches, but we're fine. And given what could have happened, that's significant.

Okay, now, before I get to what happened today, I have to give you some background. You know my mother was in a nursing home after she had her stroke. Well, we just finished moving her to another …and much better … facility after the administration of the first one announced that it did not want my father and mother being seen in the front end of the building (where there is a retirement community) because they might "disturb" the residents. I'm still thinking of suing them.

But, anyway, we got my mom moved to this other facility and things seemed to be working out fine. Then, my father needed to go to South Padre Island, TX, where he has some property that needed to be looked after. So, he and I head off and do several days of work but then he catches a vicious cold that soon turns into pneumonia. I end up taking him to the only clinic in the area and waiting for what felt like days and finally we got enough antibiotics to stagger a moose.

He feels better. We fly home. (This time, heaven be praised, he even lets me push him around the airport in a wheel chair so we don't miss any connections.)

But, then he gets worse again. He gets so bad, in fact, that I'm thinking of taking him to the hospital. But, after still more antibiotics, and enough codeine cough syrup to not only stagger the aforesaid moose but put him into a coma, my dad gets better. (Whew.)

But, about this time my mom takes a turn for the worse. She goes back into hospice care (still at the same facility, just a different program). Everyone is very concerned.

About the same time, my Dad says that he thinks maybe it is time for him to give up driving. Again, heaven be praised. We were spared having "the" talk with him. (Whew #2)

So, I'm driving him to and from the facility. He goes in every morning about 8:30 and stays until around 2:00 pm (that 1400 hours for those outside the US of A). He sits with my mom all that period, talking to her, holding her hand, and so on.

And she begins to rally. She's opened her eyes again and is eating well. (That's Whew #3).

Okay, now, today, Martha and I drive over to pick him up again about 1:45. We have plans to grab lunch with him and then do some shopping. We've just bought a house and he enjoys helping us find things to go in it.

Everyone is happy…

We leave the facility. Martha is driving and we are in her car. We come to stoplight. The light turns green. Martha moves into the intersection and…

Crunch.

A woman who tells later that she was "looking at the scenery" and didn't notice the red light, or the other traffic stopped at it, whizzes through the intersection and impacts us HARD broadsides.

Long story short: EMTs, fire truck, ambulance, police, etc., etc. and, of course, etc.

You see the irony. My father had given up driving to avoid accidents. Then we get creamed by a fully functioning adult who is just barely in middle age.

Amazingly, we are all in good shape. I was terrified …if the impact had been 12 inches a little further on, Martha could have been very seriously hurt. And my 85-year-old father is pretty frail. He was having a hard time breathing after the impact.

But, somehow, everyone came out okay. Dad's all right, Martha's fine, and I'm only a little more warped than usual.  (Whew #4, and last for the evening.)

That's my day so far.

As I say, I could complain, but since we're all walking and talking, I guess I won't. We could have been far less fortunate.

Still, if I don't complain, I may grumble a little. Under my breath.

Just pretend you don't hear me.

It begins...sorta

Well, maybe I'll back to blogging again. And, sigh, maybe I won't.

It has been an insane period in my life. Over the last few months we have had to move my mother from one facility to another, my father and I traveled to South Padre Island to check on his duplex there, he caught a serious cold which turned into pneumonia, then we came back here...

Oh, the good news, we bought a house. Closed on it yesterday.

Like I say, I will try to relate all my adventures. Sometime. Soon.

cheers
mjt

Haven't posted in forever

Like it says, I haven't posted in ages.

Lots of stories...

I will try to tell them over the next few weeks.

Weather

Things which have changed (2)

The Weather.

I had not originally planned to post the following entry this week. But, then, there were the tornados in the middle west…

One would think that the weather is, in its variable way, a constant.

And Albuquerque's weather is really rather nice. It is far warmer here than it is in the East—though, keep in mind, it is not tropical. The number of Easterners and Europeans who come here expecting it to be a kind of States-side Sahara—only to end freezing their tails off—is remarkably large. You see, the city is in a desert, but it is high desert…a mountain desert. It is dry, but it can get very, very cold. If you come here in winter, don't come in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts.

Still, winter here is better than in Boston if only because there is so very little snow. Most of the time, if simply doesn't appear, or it does, then it comes as dusting and is gone by mid-morning.

Hard on children, of course, and I can remember spending many a depressing morning trudging off to school when everyone in every neighboring state had the day off because of some happy blizzard or another. But, for me, after thirty years on post at Ice Station Zebra (a.k.a., the Northeast), it is quite welcome.

If I never see another snow shovel again, I'll be perfectly happy.


*

Actually, Albuquerque gets even less snow that surrounding areas in the state. The mountains on the eastside, and the volcanoes on the west, act like walls against the weather. Storm clouds tend to lose their punch on the way over them.

Locals call Albuquerque "the snow hole," because it will be dry when everywhere else in the state is under three feet of drift. Just this winter, for instance, the highway that leads east of the city was blocked by a massive storm. The police set up roadblocks and kept cars and trucks from going any further.

But, here, on this side of the Sandias, it was warm and sunny. We were walking about in shirtsleeves, or, at most, with a sweater.

Unfortunately, this can lead to problems. People believe the evidence of their eyes, not official reports. And so, every once in a while you hear tales of someone or many someones who come the road block and simply don't believe that things could possibly be so bad on the other side of the mountains. They will assume the authorities are being overcautious. They will proclaim to that those who listen to such warnings are cowards.

And so they've figure a way around the block. Maybe they'll even go back into the city, up the River on route 25, and then attempt the "unimproved" road that leads from the tiny village of Placitas through the National Forest and finally back down to the Valley.

And sometimes, they are not heard from again.


*

But I was saying the weather has changed In spite of what I've already written, I think it has. In small ways, yes, but changed.

Things seem minutely drier. The sage and the brush is ever slightly more brown…becomes brown sooner in the year, stays so into the spring. The "fire danger" level in the National Forests and campgrounds is now always "high," where thirty yers ago you might occasionally see a "moderate" or even a "low." Weather seems ever slightly more extreme.

I can only assume that I'm seeing the effects of global warming. And, by the way, I don't think anyone can pretend any longer that it isn't happening. The data are just too overwhelming.

Oh, perhaps, it isn't entirely 100% proven that climate change is the result of human activity—that I'll grant you. But to say that it is not underway is be an idiot or a liar. And, alas, we have so many both sorts among us, as well as various combinations of the two.

The latter point, the presence of fools and frauds, is the one I want to make. There is, you see, a danger here. To deny the obvious, to refuse to see it, to not prepare for what may be coming, is to court disaster.


*

I don't know what will genuinely happen. Prophecy is beyond me. And I don't think that climate science is now sufficiently advanced to offer any real predictions on climate change. The world may grow hotter, as the anti-CO2 crowd never tires of telling us. Or it may be grow colder. I've heard it suggested that, by releasing tons of super-chill water into the oceans, the melting of the ice caps might actually return us to a new period of world glaciations.

But change of some sort is coming. That is the one thing that history teaches about climate—the one thing of which we may be ABSOLUTELY certain—is that climate is variable. It changes.

And when it changes, it inevitably means that someone is adversely affected. It means that crops do not grow in places where they grew before. It means that rain does not fall where it was once plentiful. It means that some people in some place become hungry and desperate. It means those desperate hordes must go elsewhere to survive…regardless of the cost to themselves.

Don't believe it? Look at East Africa, which has known drought and famine for decades now.

Look at Somalia and Ethiopia, whose leaders saw the handwriting on the wall…knew what was happening as early as the 1970s…yet did nothing to prepare.

Consider the consequences.


*

I'll end with a personal experience. Or rather, one of my wife's.

I had warned her that during Spring, New Mexico is windy place. Fifty-six years ago, when my father interviewed at Sandia Labs, they told him, "In Spring, most of our scenery is mobile."

It was a joke but it was true. Wind and sand and dust are norm here in the space between winter's cold and summer's heat. If you wear contacts, you learn to also wear sunglasses even at dusk. If you have allergies, you resign yourself to sneezing.

But this year…my first Spring back…

We had gone out for lunch. We were at a little Italian restaurant on the North side of town. It was nothing special, but nice enough. And the place had huge glass windows that looked out into the street and the mountains.

Our meals had just come when I heard someone say, Look.

I turned. Martha turned. The window glass was shaking now. There was the sound of a million grains of hard sand striking the metal skins of the cars in the parking lot. Where before it had been bright and sunny, now the sky was brown with dirt, and boiling…

We watched. Everyone in the restaurant watched, speechless. Outside, the suddenly, inexplicable wind raged…

Later, Martha said to me, in a voice a little tinged with fear, "You didn't me it would be like that."

How could I tell her that no? No, I didn't. Hadn't.

Because I did not know.

And that my fear was every bit as real as hers.

Mother's Day 2013

I went across the street to see her. That is, to the Home. She was there in her chair. Her head was down. Her eyes were open. Staring. What was she thinking?

Does she think?

*

My father was there. He is always there. Always present for her. Never losing hope.

I spoke to her. She did not answer. I kissed her head. For a moment she raised her face. Her arm stirred. Her hand took mine. She held it. I could feel her fingers open and close.

Did she know what she was doing? Was there intent? Or was it only the spasm of muscle and nerve?

*


I sat on the bed. She raised her eyes to mine. What did she see? What did she perceive? How did she interpret her vision?

I visit her once a day. Usually for an hour. Sometimes, particularly on special occasions (as today) I am there a little longer.

She has good days. She has bad. On the good days, she speaks. She smiles. She will laugh. She seems to have no doubt who I am.

This is not one of the good days.

*

Today, I sat beside her. I stroked her arm. I spoke to her. She did not reply. But her gaze did not leave mine.

I have asked this before. I will ask it again. How much of her remains? How much is in there, behind those sad and beautiful eyes?

My father, in his infinite faith and immeasurable patience, assumes that all of her is there …somewhere… and that if we work hard enough and wait long enough, she will stir, awaken…speak and be as she was before.

Is this the case?

I do not know.

*

I have not my father's power. I do not have his steel and wisdom. But I will do my best to emulate him.

I will believe (I will force myself to believe) that she endures. I will believe that she is somewhere. That she exists. Maybe not in the form that sits in the chair. But someplace.

And that someday…somehow…


*

I will thus elect my reality. I will choose among the many options. I will select one rather than the others. I will operate on faith. Not facts.

I will believe.

I will believe that, eventually, she will return. Or, failing that… that her voyage and ours will once more…intersect.

*

I will believe that even in the worst possible case…

That, in some distant time, on that great bridge…that arch of white stone that spans the infinite distance…that she will hear…

That she will hear the footsteps behind her…the sound of running…the sound of those who hasten to join her.

She will hear. She will pause. She will turn.

She will greet us.

And smile.

Things which have not changed (1) -- continued

Crime (again)

An aside: if crime, per se, feels to me to be about the same (or even a little reduced), then the awareness of crime is heightened. People just seem to think about it more.

Why? I'm not certain. The media may report about it more aggressively now. Maybe that has something to do with it. And the 'Net means everyone knows everything the instant it happens. And, finally, there's Breaking Bad, the hit TV program set in this City, and which has to do with a chemistry teacher who becomes a methamphetamine dealer. (It's also going off the air shortly. Wonder how that will effect things.)

But one of the responses of the new awareness is that there are now gated communities here, which didn't exist when I lived in the city the first time. Now, you will find them all over Albuquerque, and particularly in the two eastern quadrants of the city.

One of them is directly across the street from my apartment. It is rather impressive, actually, a little reminiscent of a walled city, something out of the Middle Ages. A tall white brick wall circles it—over six feet tall in some places—and there are gates and guard posts at each entry way. Over the tops of the wall, or through the iron bars of the gates, you may glimpse the tall roofs of rather luxurious suburban homes.

So safe. So strong. So secure.

Yet…

*

The other day, I was out jogging. I saw ahead of me two teenage boys. Good kids. Just a couple of lads walking home from school or maybe the big Church just down the way. They were tall. I suspected they played basketball. But their sport of choice at that particular moment involved a small, hard rubber ball that they bounced between themselves as they walked.

The inevitable happened, of course. One of the boys threw the ball a little harder than he should have. It arced up into the sky and then over the white wall into the Gated Community.

Neither boy hesitated a moment. They simply hopped over the wall…as easily as if it were a curb…retrieved their toy, and hopped back over again. They headed on their way up the street, nodding shyly at me when I passed them and smiled.

Admittedly, they were athletic boys. Long legged boys. But, the point is the same. If they could get over the wall (and this was one of the places where it is at its tallest), then so could someone else.



*

But, the really interesting part of my story comes later.

Background: not long ago, the city had a bit of a scandal. A high-flying local real estate developer, Douglas F. Vaughan, was running a very lucrative business. He offered his family and friends, and wealthy customers, the opportunity to invest in his operations. And, at first, everyone seemed to profit. He was a magician, people said, at real estate.

Of course, it was a Ponzi scheme. People lost millions before it was all done and said. Vaughan went to jail and was duly dubbed Albuquerque's very own "Mini-Madoff."

The connection to my story? Well, before his fall, Vaughan built himself a palatial estate…a huge house, with bedroom upon bedroom, bath upon bath, garage after garage…all furnished, of course, in the best of taste.

And where was this estate? This house from which a genuine criminal mastermind directed the systematic looting of bank accounts across the city?

Where else? The very gated community that is across from me. It nestles in among the other homes of other (though more honest) affluent men and women.

And there, of course, is the irony. The good people of the Gated Community built their little city and gave it walls to seal away the contagions of the age.
Only, all along, a thief greater and more voracious then any they could have imagined…was right there among them.

Like the viper at the breast. The disease in the blood. The cancer in the cell.

Such is the illusion of safety. The true efficacy of walls.

Boston (2)

One last thing before I return to Albuquerque. I was never really a Bostonian. Nor even a New Englander. You need to grow up there for that. It helps, too, if your parents and perhaps their parents grew up there, as well.

Yet, I'm married to a native New Englander. My son spent his childhood there. I, myself, lived in the area twenty years there.

And, well, I'm proud of the town…my other, adopted home. I'm proud of the way it handled the crisis. I am proud of the way it aided the injured, grieved for the dead, endured the lockdown, co-operated with authorities, celebrated the capture of the bombers, and did it all without too much bloodlust.

There was something noble in all of that.  I'm not sure that, had I been there, I would have managed it quite so well.

So, bravo (and brava) to Beantown. You're a better place than I am a person.

Boston (1)

Taking a moment away from my story of the city, my new/old home of Albuquerque.

As I write this, the final act of a recent tragedy out in Boston has played itself. The two men…boys, really…who seem to have been responsible for the brutal, bloody, stupid acts at the Boston Marathon have been identified. One is now dead after a dramatic firefight with police. The other has been captured.

Fortunately for me, everyone I know back East is safe. No one I knew was at the race. No one I knew was caught up in the exchange of gunfire that killed the first terrorist. Though, it was a near thing. My son knew the cousin of one of the policemen who was badly wounded. And, my son's girlfriend lives just eight blocks from where the two men lived. A man I publish, one of the writers for the Belfort and Bastion, has an apartment not far from the police command post set up after the incident.  Meanwhile, some very close family friends, a couple with two young children (we've known the mother since she was a toddler), were awakened in the night by the sound of firearms and sirens.

Still, there is something horrible and enlightening about all of this. At least there is for me. Even given my distance from the actual events.

To wit, I'm struck by how much life rather resembles an old fashioned cinema, the type I used to visit as a boy, in those long lost days before Surround Sound, CGI, and megaplexes.

You would go into the theater, your popcorn in one hand, your cola in the other, and you would seat yourself somewhere near the front. The screen would glow silver and white (yes, I recall the days before color was ubiquitous). You would hear in the background the comforting rumble of the projector. You would lose yourself in the adventures of the lights and shadows on the wall before you—comedy, adventure, Three Stooges, James Bond, Disney, cartoons and cartoonish humans. The plot would contain no real surprises. The characters would be true to their stereotypes.

And, for most of us, most of the time, that's what life is like. It goes on its predictable way. Sometimes bad. Sometimes good. But largely uneventful.

But then…

Sometimes, when I was a boy, and you went to the cinema expecting to see Clint Eastwood claim his Few Dollars More, or Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux confront the Morlocks in their fury, there would be an interruption. A flash! The film would break. You would see the scene shatter before you, be replaced by light and fire and white emptiness.

The Projectionist, asleep on duty, or indifferent, or gone for a cigarette out front, would do nothing. And you (a child) would be forced to go forth. Crippled by your shyness, you would have to explain to the authorities that somehow the Hollywood epic in its wonderful blandness was gone.

Well, it's like that. We live our stories. We assume they are important. We assume they are reality, or at least all the reality that matters.

And then we reminded.

By the light. And the fire. By the emptiness.

There is something beyond the screen.

And it may not love us.

To all my friends in Boston, and all Bostonians

My thoughts are with you in this dreadful moment.

Things Which Have Not Changed (1)

Crime.

When I first told people I was moving back to Albuquerque, some of the friends I still had in the city warned me. “It’s not like when we were kids here,” they told me. “Violent crime is way out of control. It’s like that TV show, Breaking Bad, but real life.”

I'm not sure about that. Of course, it might be true that there's more crime here now than then. The city is certainly larger than it was, which means there are more people, which means in turn that (if only because of simple math) there will also be more criminals. And, too, there is a very real drug problem here—some very major drug cartels, very dangerous organizations, exist right across the border in Mexico. Plus, there are gangs here, and ethnic conflicts.

Still, the perception of crime is a personal and a very relative thing. In my own case, and from my own perspective, the city seems pretty much unchanged when it comes to threat level. If anything, I feel safer here now then I did before.

Of course, that is partly due to a lot of unique factors. I don’t normally go into those places where I’m likely to get mugged. And I am no longer a young man, and young men are surprisingly often the targets of violence, at least when the perpetrators are other young men.

Plus I am no longer in the local school system, which, in the 1960s and 1970s was not a happy place to be. Not if you were, shall we say, a member of a target population.

*

Yet, I'm interested in how often I hear from the residents that the City is worse than it was. I hear it from my friends here, both new and old, and from long term residents. You hear about the new and more violent gangs that are on the streets. They say we now have branch offices of the Cripes and the Bloods. And the Cartels really are here. Plus, of course, we have our local groups, local warlords, and everyone cites Breaking Bad.

But, the thing is, if you look at the actual crime statistics, you find rather a different story. At least as I interpret the numbers (and I’m using here the city’s own reports from cabq.gov/onlinesvcs/crimestats/), it looks to me as though the over-all rate of crime has actually gone down. Not way down. It's still all too possible to get mugged or hurt here. And we’re still far ahead (alas) of the rest of the nation…particularly in personal assault cases…but, things do seem to be moving in the right direction (i.e., downwards) even if the velocity could be better.

How then to account for the perception that Things Are Getting Worse? Why are so many people, particularly people I knew as a boy, telling me to watch my step?

I suspect the answer has to do more with the human soul than with the city's numbers. There is in us, I think, a hard-wired need to see the past as more fortunate than the present. I think we are designed, neurologically, to do so. I think nostalgia is a need as intense as hunger and desire, and arises from the same dark, damp, inexplicable recesses of the brain and the spine.

*

Why? Why would we have such a need? What would be its "evolutionary value?"

I suspect that it helps our daily lives. The past, made rosy, prepares us for the future. We strip away the realities of our genuine story…the pains, the embarrassments, the humiliations, the moment we realized our parents were human, the moment we realized that we ourselves were so very, very flawed…and what we have left is a fortress. The Past is then our refuge. Our goal.

Yes, we say, our present is less than lovely…but the past! Ah, the Past! The Past was perfect. It was where our parents loved us, our friends were genuine friends, our teachers offered us genuine wisdom, our wants were few and easily satisfied, and the future was ours to possess.

If none of these is now true, well, we have the memory that they once were. We can retreat into remembrance. Or, if we have energy, then we can set out to rebuild that vanished Eden. We can tell ourselves that we are not undertaking so daunting a task as the creation of something new. We are simply regaining what had been lost.

How easy it will be. Or so we tell ourselves.

And underestimating the length and difficulty of the job is a fundamental prerequisite to our beginning it.

*

So on some level it is healthy and good that my friends warn me of the degraded state of the world. Whether the world is degraded or not is irrelevant. It means that they are in touch with an ancient part of us that stands, amazed and frightened, at the gates of paradise. Stands, and plans, and strives for a way back in.

Which, alas, confronts me with an unsettling question. To wit, why do I not share their feelings? Why have I no touch of the shared and common Eden?



*


I suspect there are many reasons. For one, I was among that group of young people who, in the late 60s and early 70s, were so supremely focused on the future (moon shots and space travel, sci-fi and Star Trek, the fascinations of we pre-nerds at the dawning of the information age) that we never had much time to consider the Present, much less the Past.

And, too, I must confess to having a somewhat melancholic disposition. Some unfortunate aspect of my genetics makes me tend to remember only the less happy aspects of my history, the times when I've failed others or myself. (Alas, there is no shortage of those.)

But, most of all, I think, I suffer from excessive rationality. It is a kind of mental disorder, and one compounded by a regrettable knowledge of history, and particularly of its less attractive aspects.

*

As I say, these characteristics are not good. They are flaws in my makeup, not advantages.

But, one plays the hand one is dealt. I will work with not against my disability. If I cannot love the Past…or, at least, not my own Past in this city… I shall focus instead on the Present.

In other words, I shall pretend that Now is Memory. That the current is nostalgia.

Is it a perfect strategy? No. But, it is the one I shall employ. And, besides, there is a certain resonance about it. After all, I am told that this is the day of Breaking Bad.

But to break bad…to shatter evil…does not that also mean that one creates good?

Things which have changed (1)

Size.



I should mention some of the ways in which the city, Albuquerque, has changed in the time since I've been gone…that is, the last 30 years or so.



The first and probably the most obvious is sheer size. I've not done serious research, but I did check the web, and according to Wikipedia the current population is 552,804 (or, at least, that's what it was in 2011).  If you include the surrounding areas, what specialists call "the Metropolitan Statistical Area" (MSA), then things get even more interesting. The total population then is in excess of 887,000 souls.



Now, when I left here, in 1979, the population of the whole area…not just Albuquerque but the MSA, which is to say almost the whole center of the state…was just about 480,600 (at least according to the web sites I've checked). In other words, the size of the city and its environs has not quite doubled since I was an undergraduate in my twenties.



And the increase becomes even more dramatic when you go further back. When I was thirteen in 1970, the population of the MSA was somewhere between 350,000 and 370,000 people, depending (I gather) on who you count and how you count them. (I'm using censusscope.org as my source, and it gives a number of about 373,000. However, The Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University provides the smaller number.)



In 1960, when I was all of three years old, the city's population was 315,485 (again, according to censussope). Thus, just in my lifetime, Albuquerque has gone from being a pretty small town, really, to a reasonably serious player among America's middle ranked cities.



This is not necessarily a good thing. There have always been serious traffic problems here—everyone has a car, public transportation exists but it is under-funded, streets are broad and straight, and speed limits are high and often not particularly well-observed.. (There's one avenue not far from where I sit now which has a limit of 55 miles an hour. This is not a highway, understand. It is a city street. It cuts between residential areas and is lined on either side by shopping malls. Thus pedestrians, if there are any, must play a kind of tag or leapfrog with thundering cars and SUVs, all moving at speeds that would be considered intimidating on some Eastern freeways).



Now, though, those problems are increased by an order of magnitude. Traffic can be simply overwhelming. At rush hour (and it seems that, in these days of 24/7 work weeks, every hour is rush hour), you will find yourself at some stoplight on an average city road that has up to eight lanes, not counting the two additional left turn lanes, and a right turn lane as well. Yet, in spite of that vast capacity, you will be trapped, stopped, stuck in motionless traffic, with too many cars (each containing too few people), waiting long hours for something, anything, to move.



I remember when we first started visiting here, my wife and I. My father told Martha, "This town is getting just too big. The traffic is terrible."



Martha, city-girl from the densely populated east, laughed when she told me this. Albuquerque? Wonderful little Albuquerque? Albuquerque the anti-Boston? Albuquerque with too much traffic? How was that possible?



Then, she started driving here on a regular basis.



A few years, even before we moved, she told me, "You know what? Your father was too right."



And at that moment, in her face, I saw the sadness that comes with the death of a hopeful illusion—that is, the idea that somewhere, somehow, there is a kind of Shangri-La, a Mayberry, a Rivendale, where the good things of cities are not balanced by the bad.



I recognized the look quite easily. It's been on my face often enough. In Boston, New York, New Orleans, Las Angeles, Montreal, London, Paris…others.



Think of it as the curse of the small town boy. The boy who goes in search of something, some excitement, some escape…but who discovers the reality that place is largely irrelevant. If the heart is itself not at peace, then there is no safe harbor. Serenity does not come from position.



So he returns to the community that sent him forth. Only, alas, he discovers too the sad wisdom of Mr. Wolfe.



He will have no welcome.

Taking a break, and Something For Everything

I'm taking a break today. I should be posting something about New Mexico and our lives there. But, well, I'm tired. I've had a long, long day. Sometime, when I'm feeling particularly chipper, I'll share the gristly details. Or maybe I won't. We all of us have enough petty annoyances in our life. You don't need to hear mine.

Instead I'll simply post a link to the Belfort and Bastion editorial blog. There's an essay there you might enjoy. It is about a new author of ours, and his book, which is sort of a teenage Faust projected into our grim, postindustrial little age.

You can see it here.

And, in the meanwhile, I'm off to seek solace in a long jog and a short beer.

Until next time…

Onward and upward.

The Sea

Another image from the apartment.

We have my father over for dinner now and then. He comes and sits in the front room. Oreo, our dog, makes an enormous fuss over him, leaping into his lap and licking his face. He laughs and seems pleased.

Then we eat. My father likes Martha's cooking, though he finds it a little mild. This is a man, recall, for whom spices are a food group, and no plate is complete without cayenne pepper. But he enjoys the food, enjoys us, enjoys his time here…

Afterwards, we talk for a while. He talks to us, particularly to Martha, about politics or the sale of our house back in Winchester, or about my mother and his hopes for her recovery. He grows animated. Then he tires. I take him home. I leave him in the driveway of his house and drive away, not wanting to seem to hover, not wanting him to see me lingering to make certain he gets inside without problems.

And I go home to Martha. We sit and read or cruise the Web, or watch a sitcom on my laptop.

It gives me a curious feeling. You see, I never had my parents over to my apartment when I lived here. Later, when we were in Massachusetts, they would come to visit, of course, but there was never that moment that most of us have in extreme youth when we invite (for the first time) our parents to "our" place, and we show it off proudly. We say, in effect, look, see? I have the made the transition to adulthood. Or, at least, am making it. Will complete it. Soon. I promise.

Now, thirty years on, when I am already middle aged, and married, and have a grown son, I find myself experiencing that late moment of adolescence…that earliest hint of maturity…

That dawn which for me, alas, came so long delayed…when my sun is already at zenith…

And theirs so close…so dreadfully close… to the sea.

Time, Space...disco

More on the apartment…

After we got the boxes more or less sorted out, we found that it was really quite comfortable. It is large enough for our needs, yet not so big as to be a burden, and I must confess I greatly enjoyed not shoveling snow in the winter…it doesn't fall here often, or at least it isn't deep, and even should it happen the apartment complex staff handles everything nicely.

Yet, it has summoned up some curious ghosts for me.

For example, as I write this our stereo plays. We have it tuned to a local oldies station. For whatever reason the station plays a lot of music from the late 1970s—James Taylor, Moody Blues, Helen Reddy, Foreigner, Queen, Olivia Newton-John, KC and the Sunshine Band, Neil Diamond, the Bee Gees, and so on. There's even a little of the less offensive Disco on display, a genre which has aged much better than I thought it would.

In other words, I'm listening to music now that was popular just about the time I was finishing up my undergraduate degree and getting ready to move to Massachusetts.

And thus the ghosts. I sit in an apartment that isn't greatly different from the one I had then, more than thirty years ago. I listen to music that was popular when I was in my twenties. I find myself now, as then, confronting fundamental changes in my life…even in my identity. Then, I considered the prospect of a new state, a new environment, the beginnings of a career. Now, once more, I contemplate having a different existence, one in which I am the caretaker of my parents' property, or, even, the caretaker of my parents themselves.

So, I find myself returned to the uncertainties of youth. And that is both good and bad. When you are very young, life is like a grand hotel, one with a seemingly infinite number of hallways stretching off in all directions, all lined with doors, each more inviting than the last.

Now, for me, the hotel, the hallways, they still exist. But the doors? Many of them are closed forever. Barred and shut.

Ah, but there's the rub. Behind some unlocked doors are monsters. I have found a few of them. 

So, if there something sad in the loss of promise, so too is there something comforting in the knowledge that I may not need encounter them again.

Or, rather, there may yet be Minotaurs in my personal maze. But, at least…at least…this time they shall not take me unaware.