Favorite Philosopher's Blog

We were snorkeling in Cozumel in May of 2017.  I watched as our guide dove down to the sandy bottom, looked around and then shot back up to the surface.  Her legs were pinned together as she propelled herself upwards using only the massive fins on her feet.  In her skin suit and with her long black hair trailing behind her and the huge fins she looked all the world for a real life mermaid.

I wanted to go down there.  I now know I CAN go down there while snorkeling and even know how to perform the now-not-so- terrifying snorkel clearing procedure once you get back to the surface.  Maybe I should have just learned to do that, but no.

”2018 is the year I am going to learn to scuba dive” I confidently proclaimed on a Facebook in January of 2018. I don’t remember exactly how I got hooked up with local divers but I started conversations with them.  First question: Am I too old? (“No”)   To this I now say “bullshit” but only where my instructor can’t hear me.

Through many conversations and much reading, I decided I didn’t want to die scuba diving and therefore I knew I wanted private lessons and was willing to take as long as it took to learn thoroughly and pay what I had to pay achieve the goal of not dying underwater.  I knew intuitively that panicking underwater would kill me just as surely as running out of air would, even if I had a 3/4 tank of the life giving necessity left at my disposal.

I had dreams.  I would wake up in the morning, see that my fellow facebook scuba group members were meeting at 7 a.m.in Laguna and if I hurried I could make it to do a little shore diving.   I would dive shipwrecks.  I would have a sea lion swim up to my face like a boxer puppy and look at me with the same wide-eyed goofiness that I had come to adore in my boxers.  It would all be so magical.  I would also not die in the process.

I met with Ashley, my forever instructor (I say that because apparently it is going to take forever for me to master this), on a beautiful day in August 2018 at a burger joint in Laguna.  Al was with me because I wanted him to feel comfortable that I would not die.  I listened to her plan, her philosophy (“I will not let you die”), how much it would cost, etc.  I remember telling Al after I signed the papers “This is probably going to cost about $1500 with lessons and equipment.”

Any divers who just read that sentence could have five extra air tanks and would still perish due to involuntary breath holding from laughing so hard.  You’ve just learned the most important rule in diving. Don’t hold your breath. Ever.

Later on I would tell Al: “Well, if this is the cost of a nice cruise vacation, if I only do it for a year or two it will have been worth it.”  After 37 years and more than one expensive hobby under my belt (musical equipment runs a close second to diving equipment), he just nods his head,  It’s not a permission thing, by the way.  It’s our money.  I just like him to know I’m aware there might be a funeral to pay for some day.

I left Laguna with a belly full of burger and a wallet empty of everything.  I had my learn to scuba manual which I had to read, take tests and then meet again with Ashley.  I couldn’t wait to get at it, but we were headed to the Baltic and other places for five weeks so I would t start actual lessons until October.

A word about Ashley.  If you have followed my FB at all you know this woman is brilliant, fearless (4 tours in Afghanistan, go figure), unstoppable (I’d have quit long ago had she let me, which she hasn’t and won’t) , and apparently is happy making about a buck an hour after all the time she has spent/is spending with me.  Most importantly she has not let me die. Or give up.  A recurring theme in my journey is me bitching about how hard it is and I don’t think I can do this and surely I’m going to die since I can’t breath (I’m on land) and Ashley just watches me have this adult meltdown, not saying anything and when my respiratory rate has returned to normal she says “ready to try again?”  As if she didn’t just hear me all but say “I’m quitting right here and now.” This is a woman I hate to love and love to hate  – I  sure I’m not the only one and she wears that reputation more proudly than any Army medal she may have earned.

Again, she hasn’t let me die. There are skills one must learn when diving, most of which in retrospect are easy as pie in the pool sessions,  not so much when you have to demonstrate them in the ocean.  One such skill is taking your regulator (read: source of life and happiness, that which brings the air to your lungs) out of your mouth, not hold your breath but let little air bubbles float out through your pie-hole and then put it back into your mouth, purge the water out by using the wonderful button made for that purpose or forcefully do it yourself and then start to breathe again,  Ah!!!!!  Air!!!!!  They key phrase there is PUT IT BACK INTO YOUR MOUTH.  Only once recently when demonstrating that skill, combined with another one,  I couldn’t seem to open my usually big fat mouth to get the whole thing past my lips to make the obligatory seal. (Not the animal, the seal that allows the air to go into your face and not out and up to the surface, thus deferring death for yet another dive.)

You haven’t lived, literally, until you’ve had Ashley slam a regulator into your mouth and not let go until you’ve regained your composure, gotten your lips around the whole mouthpiece and realized you could breathe.   One of her students found out after a training dive that she’d been a Master Sergeant in the Army and remarked “no wonder she’s so forceful” – actually, son, she’s just not going to let you die on her watch.

This Part I has gone on longer than I intended, so I will stop now.  I’m realizing that this journey is going to take up quite a bit of blog time and space.  The more I remember about this past 9 months-that-seems-like-years – well, the more I realize how much I have to put down for personal posterity.

So more to come later, including the story behind this piece of advice: when you are diving and slightly panicked and holding on to the buoy line for dear life (totally unnecessary but as I said…slightly panicked) do not grab your instructor’s snorkel while she is trying to help you.

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Ok first of all. Before you listen to this, if you like homeopathy for whatever reason don’t turn this off because of his first comment regarding homeopathy.  You can do whatever you want and if you think it helps you, more power to you.

Secondly, listen to the WHOLE thing. Put aside your prejudices about everything. Listen to the whole thing with an open mind. Healthcare is broken. It’s on all of
us. None of us are passive participants in this national mess. When you hear him say Bernie is a moron don’t turn it off. Listen to why he says that. Open your mind. Healthcare is broken and needs to be fixed first. Listen to his opinion about the fact that we bomb the shit out of other countries and treat our
own citizens this way. He is not a healthcare apologist. The AMA is part of the problem. Listen to his statement that we have medicalized the problems in our country – (let the children get diabetes from eating McDonalds and then let the doctors figure out how to fix it. Let drugs and homelessness run rampant and then let the healthcare system deal with it.)

My son just graduated from med school and is now in his residency. The process of medical school is beyond grueling and the interview process for residency is just as grueling. He and his wife are lucky. They interviewed at Hahnemann. They ended up staying in Richmond. I know first hand the stress they endured and endure and the PASSION is the reason they do it.  They are, together, $400k in debt. So yeah, they didn’t do it for the fucking money. In the past two months their peers found out where they were going for residence, said goodbye to the lifelong friends they made in med school, uprooted their lives (some with families) to go, with great excitement and anticipation, to the next step in their
medical education. Those who went to
Hahnemann, like my son and his wife, work in the city, not some cushy suburban hospital. But this isn’t about them. The lives of the resident who are learning at Hahnemann, the lives of the staff at Hahnemann, the PEOPLE WHO ARE SERVED by these tireless passionate people are now turned upside down because of PROFIT. It’s so fucking sick I literally feel like throwing up right now. Listen to man.

I started to limit my FB interaction because I was too addicted, really, and it is so very easy to follow a posted story until you’ve read ten stories that had nothing to do with the story you started out being interested in.  There are one or two people – and you know who you are – who post such interesting things it makes it almost impossible to not click it….and we’re off for another half hour.

I wanted to delete my account completely but then I wouldn’t be able to message and I wanted that ability to have a real conversation if I wanted.  That has worked out fairly well and while I have been better about not obsessively checking FB, it is creeping in again.  Why do I have to have such interesting, clever, creative friends. Fie on you all!

Sorry.

Today I was looking for an old blog post about swearing in front of your kids and how it backfired on me.  These days I find myself surrounded by a younger generation who are generating reproductions themselves and the subject has come up of “holy shit, maybe I need to clean up my language before the baby comes.”  Meh.  Not necessarily, my kids turned out ok.

I went down my own rabbit hole of my writing and realized that I hadn’t written much lately, despite my plan to write more on blog versus spend time on FB.  So today is the day I start, ahem, relieving myself.  I will post links here on FB and you can decide for yourself if you dare to glimpse into the deep recesses of my noggin or not.

First stop…the scuba journey.

I have always enjoyed hiking.  When my parents would take us to the mountains I learned the rewards of hiking were many.  Before anyone knew the Grand Tetons existed, before Jackson Hole, Wyoming became a billionaire’s hangout, we’d take our tent and go camping in campgrounds with pit toilets and the occasional bear roaming through.

One hike we went on in the Tetons that became a jewel of a family memory was to Hidden Falls. We’d take a boat ride across the lake and be dropped off at the trail head.  Then we’d hike up; you could hear the falls long before you saw them.  Then suddenly you rounded a bend and there they were. My Dad snapped a photo of ten year old me kneeling down and drinking from the pool.  Yes, I’m that old, kiddos, you used to be able to drink out of streams without sterilizing the water first.  My Dad later painted an oil painting of that photo and it now hangs in my son Andy’s home.

Through the years I hiked a lot.  As an adult I admit I’ve never been a great uphill hiker (or biker for that matter). Al will tell you I’m a bit of a whiner, especially if it is hot,  but it was always worth it.

I’m not sure when it stopped being fun, when the view at the top became not worth it.  Not in Hong Kong, not in Washington State, not anywhere.  Maybe the Grand Canyon trip was the last straw. I could have lived without being one of the 1% of the millions of visitors who get to see the bottom – and then have to walk back up. That was 10 years ago.

This most recent hike with two of my dearest friends may have been the last uphill hike.  I felt bad, I was my usual whiny self  but this time it was different.  There was a sadness because I faced the realization that if I don’t like it so much, I should accept that, and choose easier hikes or stay home,  I asked Al to please remind me of that – I’m always “game” – and then sorry I agreed when I’m dragging my sorry butt up the trail, potentially making everyone uncomfortable.

The good news is there are plenty of flat hikes to be done. I walked 11 miles on Yosemite Valley floor a few years back, and it was wonderful.  I am just hoping that there are long, flat hikes in the woods, not just the visitor center “loop” but real hikes, at least a few miles and back, trails on which I don’t have to constantly be looking down so I don’t trip. Trails on which I’m not wondering how much more.  Trails on which I can look around and hear the birds instead of the voice in my head saying “I should have stayed home.”

This was a tough realization for me, but I guess it’s part of this time of life: determining what’s worth doing, what’s not, where I want to spend my time and energy.  I’m not done with this hike called life, I’m just done climbing difficult peaks that I don’t have to climb.

I’ll be waiting at the bottom with a cool glass of water for my friends, and they can tell me all about it and that will be enough for me.

I’ll be gone in thirty or less years.  But this will remain.

You know back in 1970 it seemed impossible that whales would make a comeback and that yesterday I was able to take visitors out to view these magnificent beasts swimming past our coast. As we wrote letters in biology class the first Earth Day to the companies in Chicago that were spewing out black smoke, we hardly knew that it could make a difference. A mere 40 years later, a friend who grew up in San Clemente says that when she was growing up, seeing Catalina Island a  23 miles away was a rare and exciting occurrence because of the smog. Now we see it daily.  Indeed my parents were in LA for a week back in the day and never even knew the San Bernardino mountains were right there.  So, even though your one straw might not “make a difference,” it’s the awareness that does, over time, change the world.  I truly fear it is too late.  But as Americans we should be leaders towards a better world and as people we should lead in any way we can.

Pleased as punch to say that my cheap Brother sewing machine was dead (the Hamlet costumes took their toll despite her stellar performance on the tough fabrics) and I fixed it!

The motor was seizing.  Of COURSE it was two weeks out of warranty. It was so inexpensive to begin with and not worth the cost of taking it somewhere, I decided to take it apart and see what was up.  A little jiggling, a little oil (new fangled machines you’re supposed to take to a dealer to oil – are you kidding.  I’ve been oiling my Kenmore for 38 years) and she’s as good as new sorta. At least it doesn’t appear I screwed up the computer innards. 

I love fixing things.  I’ve fixed washing machines more than once, microwave oven touch pad replacement, dishwashers, ice makers, don’t even know what else.  No better feeling than finding a part online for $20 and finding the You Tube video that explains what to do and then having the light go on, the switch work, the ice clunking into the glass, the dishwasher stop making that godawful noise.

This, though, fixing my sewing machine is a true moment of joy.

It’s been a weird couple of weeks.  Months really.  When I returned from fall travels I sat down with my piano – just my piano and me – my childhood Chickering spinet upright – and started at the beginning.  I took 8 years of piano as a child and am not too shabby at tickling the ivories and go through spurts where I play a lot and then don’t again for a long time.

I always say my wonderful teacher, Mrs. Maclean, spared me the torture and math of theory.  At least that’s what I thought until I sat down and started at the beginning, just practicing my scales every day.  Playing with the chords in each scale, teaching myself the theory, suddenly tonight I found myself composing sweet little tunes in different keys.  The more I “scribble” the more I find that she did teach it to me in the only way my little insecure girl self could learn it – by playing songs, lots and lots of songs.  And of course the scales.  It’s all in there’s waiting for me to find it.  It’s coming along much more easily than I thought it would.

Mrs, Maclean lived in a big old Victorian farmhouse in  Mundelein, Illinois.  I would walk to her house after school when the weather allowed.  I was very shy and hardly said ‘peep’ when I was there.  When I would walk there after school she would have a cookies and milk snack for me.  I’d sit in that old farmhouse kitchen and not say a word.  I can still see her smiling at me, understanding that I wasn’t being rude.  I was just that shy. (Recitals were agony for me).  The house was always messy, so different from my house where everything was in its place.  I remember when she needed a pencil she could always find one somewhere in her baby grand, which was piled high with music.

I loved it there.  I loved her.  Lest you think this small town teacher was not accomplished – the whole family was comprised of musicians, she and her daughter and  (to me) ancient mother and father would give the parents a reward at the recitals by playing a recital of their own when we were done plunking our way through Baby Elephant Walk and Fur Elise. I can still see their hands, I can see them playing the duets, I can remember wanting to play like that. They were extraordinary.

On my piano sits a “head shot” of my godfather, Howie, my mother’s favorite cousin.  He was a professional musician, played piano all over Chicago, but to me he was the dear man who, after the dishes were cleared from Thanksgiving, would sit down at the aforementioned Chickering and play jazz standards for the extended family.  Off the top of his head! I never tired of listening to him.  He came to our home in California years ago and although his hands were old he still “had it.”  I not only have a video of him playing, but of my children sitting on the couch mesmerized, just as I had been at their ages. I can remember wanting to play like that.

At the same time I got down and dirty with piano again, I was making the decision that if I was going to sing by myself  for others enjoyment it would only be when I can accompany myself.  I was also making the decision to stop choral singing so that traveling with Al would be unencumbered by schedules and the pull of singing.  It was difficult, I like choral singing, but deep in my heart I knew that I would someday regret not following my personal travel agent wherever he wants to go, and following him happily.  The minute I made that conscious decision, I felt so much stress leave me.  I can’t wait to see where Al takes me. I also can’t wait to follow Ashley, my scuba instructor, to faraway places.  And I am thoroughly immersed in my piano again, on my own time and schedule which is every day.

Tonight after piano scribbling for a long time, during which I caught myself glancing at Howie’s photo and smiling at him, I pulled out an old piece of sheet music.  It belonged to my Dad.  Dad played piano by ear, but only in the Key of C and only a few songs: Stardust, Moonglow, maybe a few others.  He was always frustrated by his inability to read music.  In his retirement, he went to the same Mrs, Maclean to learn to read music.  The song was one of his favorites: The Rainbow Connection.”

I opened it and started to play and then started to stumble over the music because I found my eyes drawn to familiar writing: Mrs. MacLean’s pedal markings, “tied” reminders,   “play to here.” There was more, lots of writing about chords and noting key changes and pointing out interesting chords,  She was teaching my Dad theory.  There was more: my Dad’s writing, jotting down things she must have told him that he didn’t want to forget.  (The only thing missing was the stickers of flowers and birds that I got to pick out and put on the song I had mastered. Wish I still had those books.)

I could see them both, along with Howie, and I felt all of them come through my fingers.  “You can play like that, Mary.”  Well, they were my biggest fans and I’m not so sure I’ll have enough time, but I am sure that this time I will not stop.  I will no longer short change my piano. It truly was and is my first passion, from the day I woke up from my 5 year old nap to hear my mother playing the only song she knew: “The Isle of Capri.” The sounds of that piano captured my heart and soul and like everything else from those years was thwarted by my shyness and lack of self confidence.

Now it doesn’t matter anymore.  There are no music schools to dream of applying to.  There are no concert halls awaiting my arrival.  There is just me.  And my piano.  And that’s enough.

The Rainbow Connection

The last time we went to the canal, it was in one fell swoop from Atlantic to Pacific. This time it’s Pacific to Gatun Lake to just sit for the night and go back the same way tomorrow. Last time during that day there were ships in the lake waiting their turn and that’s what we expected.  Nope. It was this. Still. Quiet. I felt like I was in the boundary waters of Minnesota except for the hot and humid part. Everyone else on the ship was inside after getting up so early this morning.  So it was just Al and Mary up on the back  of the 12th deck.  Still. Quiet. Magical. 

I was always bad at world geography in grade school. Don’t know why. But my mom would make study questions for me and even then I was extremely elated and grateful for a low ‘B’.  Never had a problem with US geography – maybe living in the middle of the country made it somehow more accessible.  I also was not great at world history – waaaay too much of it and I couldn’t keep straight all the kings with the same names and the constant wars and the dates and blah blah blah blah blah.  My eyes would glaze over.  US history was a favorite subject, so no problem. Only less than 200 years to keep track of. I got this.

Now that world travel is on the horizon I bought a world atlas and I cannot believe how awful my sense of geography is.

It’s embarrassing really.   If I had a better visual grasp of world history perhaps it wouldn’t have shocked me that I don’t have to go far from Denmark to hit Russia.  What?  Russia is RIGHT THERE? (Cue Al – “Mary, the world wars?”). I guess I always did wonder why the Germans and the Russians were fighting when they were so far away from each other. Why would they bother with th harsh winter thing.  Oh, now I get it.  But isn’t Russia over near China? (The answer, Mary, is “yes, that too.”)

My friend who is of Armenian descent? Hmmm, I don’t see it anywhere here near Greece where I thought it was.  I had to look in the index.  It’s WHERE? Just north of IRAN AND IRAQ?  Okaaaaay…..

This is the worst and what prompted this blog:  I honest to God thought the Galápagos Islands were near Antarctica.  As in SOUTH of South America.

They are not. They are just southwest of Central America.  I am stunned.  Maybe I will get there after all.  How could I be so oblivious to where stuff is in the world?

I know that Americans have a reputation for not knowing world geography – to be fair, how many Armenians know where Illinois might be and how it is the greatest state in the union – but I seem to be way off the bell curve for someone with my level of education and general awareness of what is going on around me.

Well, I have my trusty world atlas now.  So maybe, like scuba diving and singing, it’s never too late, especially since I won’t have to make maps colored with crayons and then try to label over the crayon-ing the principal seaport and then draw little pictures of cows or  manufacturing plants or whatever is the main industry of the country.  It all turned out to be a such a fucked up mess – my maps were never hung up on the classroom walls, I guarantee you that.  I tried using colored pencils but it wasn’t much better.  I DID like making relief maps of the US though – making those Rocky Mountains and coloring the rivers, now that’s right up this miniaturist’s alley.

The Galapagos near Antarctica, though. Jeez.