HELPFUL GEORGE

George was always being helpful. Who could fault him for that? He'd probably been doing that since childhood. As the youngest of seven, with three older brothers, he was the baby of the family and lost his mother soon after he was born. Helping out the sister raising him and getting along with the brothers taught him how to make his way in life. It was a survival technique. He learned how to use it to gain control. It was a life-long tool.
Whenever someone brought up a plan or a desire helpful George jumped in. He'd do it for you. You wouldn't have to bother with that. Or he had a suggestion for a better way to accomplish what you wanted. "I'll take care of that for you" was his refrain. He used it often with my mother. He was so nice. Mother almost never ventured out from home without him. She always counted on his help for everything in life. It wasn't always that way for her, however. Before she married she was successful in her own right.
He went to work every day being helpful. He was a bank teller, helping people take care of their savings. Later on he moved up to helping other tellers do their work well, and helped the bank make the transition from hand-sorted punch cards to electronic processors. He ended his career in the same bank he started out in after High School, helping employees manage their personal affairs through various bank sponsored benefit plans.
He helped out with the Boy Scouts, he helped out in Sunday School and church affairs. As his own children moved away he helped them whenever they encountered financial difficulties. But that was it. If he couldn't help you he wasn't really interested in you. He was pretty much a closed book. He had no personal friends. He was not affectionate. Perhaps he was always helpful, but he was never there. How can virtues be so deviously disguised that we never realize how terribly handicapped we might be?

PINOCCHIO

It was diabolical, however he got there. He never did me any kindness, but then, of course, he wasn't a real person. But, somehow, in my imagination, and for the purpose of this essay, let's say he became a real boy.
All day long he sat in his favorite chair in the corner of my small, rather dark, bedroom. The muted tones of browns, reds, and yellows swallowed him sufficiently so that he was not immediately visible. You had to know he was there, otherwise he might surprise you with a hard poke of his wooden nose when you tried to sit in that chair. He never made room by scooting over so that you could sit comfortably with him in that child-sized, padded rocker.

He had teeth. You could stick your finger in and feel them, almost sharp, inside. And a tongue too, when you kissed him on the mouth. His big ears stuck out and didn't bend when you brushed by them. But what was most impressive about Pinocchio was his shiny black hair that was never out of place, and his wide-open eyes, blue and never blinking.

As long as you stayed up there, with the head and the face, you were safe. Safe, that is, unless you happened to catch a glimpse of it from the crib when it was almost dark and that wide grin assumed a more malevolent aspect. As soon as you began to explore his large body with your fingers however, you were in trouble. He seemed to bite no matter where you grabbed him. The worst punishment was meted out when you tried to pull him apart, for his joints opened up and then snapped shut when you let go. Getting pinched there was no fun!

He wore a black bow tie, that was soft and silky, but his shiny white collar and all the rest of his clothing, bright red shorts and yellow shirt, were molded and painted on his strong but hollow body. Arms and legs were articulated like a medieval knight's armor, and standing alone was just as difficult for him as it must have been for an unhorsed jouster. That's why he spent so much time in his chair.

I don't know why but I was constantly falling over him. He was unyielding, pointy, snappy, and when he hit you it hurt. Who would ever have thought of him as a playmate? I tried stuffing him in the toy chest but couldn't close the lid; he was too big. So that's why he spent most of his time alone in the corner. I never used the rocker myself any longer.

In later years he was the perfect smiling patient for my sister and me to welcome into our medical office. No matter what we did to him he grinned. Operation after operation failed to change his personality so we finally tired of him and discharged him as hopeless. He probably bummed around homeless for many years afterward. I ran a search for him on the Internet and did come up with a picture of him, and his friends. He hasn't aged a day.

Trained Not to Look

If anything was wrong we weren't supposed to notice. That's what made life possible, according to the Disney principles that governed in our household. "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." was a line repeated over and over by our mother. How did I ever develop the hyper-critical attitude of spotting errors; mistakes made by others more often than not? Perhaps it was defensive. Perhaps I was being constantly criticized and needed to deflect attention onto someone else.
I could have chosen my younger sister as my target. She was getting more attention than I was as we aged. I seemed to need to prove that I was smarter than she was. I think that need carried over into the schoolroom later on. And I can remember the pleasure I experienced when I could correct my father when he said something at the dinner table. It was surprising what he could forget, or how misinformed he could be about new developments in science. But, in public, it was essential not to notice and not to embarrass anyone making a mistake. No one wanted to be singled out for criticism. I, especially, could not bear being found at fault.
We lived, as Candide's Pangloss says: "In the best of all possible worlds". Nothing could be amiss, could it? Why was everything so disappointing to me? Why did things always break? I found myself always in a rush to fix something before the malfunction was noticed. I think I learned that from my father. My role in life was eventually to become Mr. Fix-It. No one else was supposed to notice how broken life really was. I could see the faults all too clearly. I trained to see nothing else. In doing so I became invisible.
For a very short while I did function at a higher level of criticism. I was able, with the help of my girlfriends, to see beauty; to look with awe at the world around me. They helped me acquire a taste for art, music, poetry and the intellectual order of the universe. I learned to delight in my senses and appreciate the cultivation of tastes. History, philosophy, and writing stimulated me and drew me into new and different worlds. Alternative communities offered ways to explore possibilities for living in creative relationships. I came to see another life. I didn't see the disappointment that was to come.
The reality of life in the late '60s was summarized by the voices in Washington Square Park that spoke of "co-opting" the principles and approaches that the "Flower Children" broadcast so effectively into our culture. The fix for social problems became the "hype" that corporations and their publicists cloaked themselves with as capitalism responded in force to the innocent steps we had taken. The reality was a disappointment for those of us who struggled with communes, sexual identities, new music and art forms, or the commerce of the future. We trained ourselves not to look, not to see what had become of our insights into this "best of all possible worlds". We became a world culture, trained to follow our dreams, and not to look at what the reality of what we had become. We became invisible, lurking behind the broken forms we had brought into being. Trained not to look. To do otherwise would lead to despair.

Sandy Beaches

Is there really an extra layer of fat that makes it possible for girls to stay in the water for such a long time? That's what I was told when we went to Jones Beach near our Long Island home during summer vacation. My sister would spend hours in the water with her friend and neighbor Arlene. It used to bother me when my cousin Kenneth would call Dorette "Chubby", using a nickname she'd acquired as an infant that was no longer appropriate. That was unfair, then, but now, sixty years later, it doesn't nearly describe the large, overweight woman she's become. I resemble my mother, truly an ectomorph in her maturity, while Dorette resembles our father in stature. But I've lost my tolerance for cold water and rarely swim now, even though I loved the ocean of our childhood.

The waves were what I enjoyed the most. They often appeared towering, immense, and came curling and crashing down on me if I miss-timed my dive beneath the swell. What a challenge as I stood there defying the next assault. Sometimes there was nothing to do but accept the punishing, rolling, sand-abrasive onslaught from the fallen crest. But even more satisfying was knifing through the breaking wave into the calm space beyond. Floating and paddling out there alone was peaceful and nourishing as the sun warmed me in the clear green water.

When I tired of the inaction I'd turn and watch seaward for the next swell. Then I'd strike out for the shore, timing my stroke to bring me in with the crest of the wave that would shoot me through the surf up onto the sandy shore and then leave me stranded and filled with delight. Before the next wave came lapping at my feet I'd be up and running back into the water, repeating again and again that call to challenge the awesome power of the ocean. If I got caught in a nasty undertow it could be very frightening and I'd come out to crawl into the warm sand or wrap myself in a blanket and cover myself over in the quiet darkness of warm stillness.

I could spend hours lying there, tired and satisfied. Dorette and Arlene would be out in the water, running and splashing no matter how hard the wind blew or how cool the water was. They'd be blue with cold and covered with goose bumps when they finally came out to towel themselves dry. They were always together. For some reason none of my playmates ever spent much time at the beach. So, when I got tired of just lying around I'd go off down the beach, walking and walking along the water, noticing things at my feet or off on the horizon, always alone, with ocean waves calling and echoing over the sand.

I got to know Jones Beach quite well over the years. Arlene's father was a lifeguard so there was always an opportunity to get a ride down to the beach. The guards had surfboards, big heavy things that they'd push out beyond the waves and then paddle back and forth to amuse themselves during slack hours. There were no fancy surfers to watch in those times, but it was glorious to see a board return like a bowspit on a wave, carrying its orange and black clad occupant straight for the wooden stand that was home for the day.

When the afternoon neared its end the girls would undoubtedly be back in the water, delaying as long as possible the calls for departure. I'd be hot and crusted with sand and salt. Enough of the water for me by then. How could they keep it up? They had a special energy that I'd never be able to tap. I noticed many years later when we swam in the Mediterranean or spent days in the Medoc dunes on the French side of the Atlantic that it was the same for my wife and daughters. Hour after hour in the water, so much so that they could be called water-rats. Eventually the sun got to me so that I'd have to seek shade and coolness. I'd find a spot of quiet and stillness while still feeling the surge and swell of the water and hear the roar and splashing of the sea. It couldn't be just that layer of fat that fitted them so well for the water, could it? It was there on those sandy beaches that I began to feel that there was something really different that separated us. I still don't know just what that might be.

THE WHITE NOISE OF MATRIMONIAL SEX

How was I to know anything different? My parents had chosen this path early on and it worked for them. Our schools and churches taught that we all were destined to marry and raise children. Stories and pictures presented us with a vision of our futures that focused on the nuclear family just as we entered the nuclear age that was about to turn our world upside down. I could not avoid that buzz or hum of the “low grade fever pulsing amongst us unmentioned”, the “white noise of matrimonial sex”. I was driven by a force I did not understand.

Where did it come from, that buzz that pervaded our young lives? From Mother Nature as we went about killing millions of our youngest and finest specimens? Supposedly we were being prepared for citizenship, for meaningful participation in the democratic determination of the course of our social interactions. Beyond that lay the obligation of making a living in this world; the world as described by our political philosophy. But in reality, what motivated us, what guided us, was the impulse to procreate. To adopt the cultural imperative of matrimonial sex.

Our “schooling” turned out to be a preparatory indoctrination for life in mid-twentieth century America. We were taught the rudimentary skills for communication and computation, a basic outline of the foundations of the physical sciences, and a primer on patriotism that briefly touched upon history and geography. But all that was just window-dressing to the real concern of our suburban culture: family solidity.

It was just at this time in our national history that the strength of the family as a social unit was being challenged by the struggle of capitalism for domination in the world. It is no surprise to me now that the primordial drive of matrimonial sex became the ultimate tool for preserving those “family values” which have become so loudly proclaimed recently, even as they succumbed to the economic reality of global capitalism in the 21st century. But I was certainly surprised to find out that I had completely misread the signs of the times. The revolutionary ‘60s had turned my world upside down. Family solidity had disappeared, for me, in practice as well as in theory. What was I to do?
There was an illusion to maintain.
My next child was on the way. My ex spouse wanted to remarry. I was divorced and remarried in the space of a few months. This way the child would be “legitimized” and a new family would commence a life of its own. But I was in turmoil; devastated by the upheaval of the failure of matrimonial sex to prevail in the face of adversity. And our culture was singing a new tune; that of freedom, of equality, of liberation from the past. In the face of adversity I followed the dance of that piper who led away from that portal whose inscription read “All hope abandon, ye who enter here”. There was light, not darkness, ahead on that path. I walked away from family solidity into the silence of the natural world in order to find out who I truly was, where I had come from, and where I was going.

Toute Pensée émet un Coup de Dés*

I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler
I'm a long way from home
And if you don't like me
You can leave me alone
….
Oh, I once had me a true love
Her age was sixteen
She was the flower of Belton
And the rose of Saline
(Bob Dylan)

Alone. That's how it started and that's where it stands now. Hard to believe, isn't it? Seems like we should be in this together. But we're not, evidently, since we have to go around inventing ourselves continuously. I'd like to be a rambler, but I stick close to home.

Even after High School I didn't venture any farther than the Long Island Railroad could take me. And I gambled on what was then a sure thing: "Better living through chemistry". I had invented a character for myself that we'd call today a nerd or a geek. I thought I was going to live in a laboratory, like I did before at home in the one I'd fashioned under the cellar stairs. But I didn't have a hand to play out that game. The realization of that started me on the rambling road.

My sophomore year was at Alfred University; a long day's bus ride from New York City. I was pretty much alone there too, except for a small group of Asian students who came to learn ceramics engineering. But something struck me when I saw a notice announcing a "spelunking" weekend with the Outdoor Club. We went to State College Pennsylvania, right in the middle of the limestone cave country. Here were "outdoor geeks" who reveled in crawling through mud and tight spaces in the underground rock. Oh yes, now I remember. That strange classmate, George Moorse wore a spelunker's patch on his jacket the day we went frogging. My parents often spoke of their honeymoon and took us to Luray Caverns during a family vacation. And, then too, each year we went camping in the Adirondack Mountains. I had a model for outdoor life as well. To top it off I'd learned how to hitch-hike as a Junior Counselor at Camp Kittatinny in northern New Jersey. What to do with an official day off? No one stayed around on that day so I tried my luck hitching a ride to the movie in town. Yep, I was prepared for a couple of sorties on my own that year at Alfred. They were memorable.

My Junior Year at NYU brought the inescapable realization that I was not going to be a nerd. Rigorous science was not my thing. It was time to hit the road. "Join the Army and see the world". But I couldn't get out of character. I was drafted into the Chemical Corps and sent to France, close by the limestone cave locale of prehistoric humankind. I rambled about the countryside in my first automobile, a 1952 Plymouth four door sedan. Mountains, caves and old towns became my haunts. But it was a solitary life, even in the barracks. I had to take a gamble. It was sort of a blind date, and it worked. For a while I had a companion on my weekend rides. We went to beaches and cafes, movies and dances. And, finally, Sunday dinners "en famille". But time was running out and something else needed to be done to preserve this relationship. It was a spur of the moment gamble, an offer to join me in my rambles back in the USA. That changed everything.

I was no longer alone. I had a constant companion. But I was no longer either a rambler or a gambler. I was a husband, I was a father. I was a student and a teacher. I was a professional entering an academic career. I was. And then I had to reinvent myself. Well, I tried, but I didn't get very far away from the first model on that try, nor on subsequent tries.

When I gamble it is with small wagers. When I ramble it is with small steps. Do we ever get very far from home, even over the course of a lifetime?

Every thought brings forth a roll of the dice. But a roll of the dice will never do away with the play of circumstance.



*Hommage a Mallarmé