bury Michigan? when they closed coffin, there was someone else inside
Inspired by Bob Ufer as he said on the radio on November 20, 1976.
“Ohio Came To Bury Michigan, All Wrapped In Maize And Blue The Words Were Said, The Prayers Were Read And Everybody Cried But When They Closed The Coffin, There Was Someone Else Inside!
The Bucks Came To Bury The Wolverines – But Michigan Wasn’t Dead, And When The Game Was Over, It Was Someone Else Instead.
Twenty-Two Michigan Wolverines Put On The Gloves Of Gray, And As Cavender Played “The Victors”, They Laid Woody Hayes Away!”
I was raised on Woody Hayes.
Woody Hayes lived under my bed and if I got out of bed in the middle of the night, Woody might grab me and take me off to Columbus.
Now I live in Carolina.
And nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina and write silly things about a football game up North.
But who cares.
Michigan has now won one thousand and one college football games.
A Roman using roman numerals would add it up like this, MI.
stand surf-tormented shore is all we see, seem but a dream within a dream?
Adapted from the poem, A Dream within a Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe.
The poem was first published in the March 31, 1849, edition of the Boston-based story paper The Flag of Our Union, so says Wikipedia and I am too lazy today to challenge the statement so I will just cite it and be done with it.
Wikipedia also says, The poem dramatizes the confusion felt by the narrator as he watches the important things in life slip away. Realizing he cannot hold on to even one grain of sand, he is led to his final question whether all things are just a dream.”
Wikipedia cite’s that statement’s source as Dawn B. Sova’s book, Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001).
May all things are dreams and as Big Bill has Prospero say, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on … ” (The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1)
Which I guess leads to the question, which comes first, the dreamer or the dream?
For the photo and something I may use later:
Shadows on the waves frozen on the phone moments caught once forever
Here is Mr. Poe’s poem.
A Dream within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
simply not supposed … to happen, brain numb, God’s way offering mercy
I gathered together today, Thanksgiving Day, 2023, with my favorite people.
Five of my grandchildren with number 6 not here but much on my mind.
One granddaughter grabbed my hand and said, “You sit by me” and I sat at the kids table and had the best time.
A day of Thanksgiving.
And I am thankful.
Thankful for my family, always skating on the thin of ice of tragedy but somehow not crashing through.
I think of my extended outer family.
A group that has seen too much of tragedy in the last couple of years for reasons unknown and unknowing.
And my heart goes out to them but there are few if any words that might be said.
In recent reading of a Garrison Keillor book his story hits on the death of his 17 year old grand son and he pauses.
A roomful of people in shock gathered for the memorial. I sat behind his brother, Charlie, and his mother, Tiffany, and his grandmother Julie. All I felt was a great heaviness, no tears, just shock. It simply wasn’t possible to imagine Freddy absent from the world. I stood up with Bob and Adam and we sang “Calling My Children Home” and sat down. We all lose our parents, but losing a child is simply not supposed to happen. The brain goes numb, God’s way of offering mercy. If we were fully cognizant, it would be unbearable.
Mr. Keillor also wrote his grandson’s obituary where he said, “… earthy journey ended much too early on Monday at the age of seventeen, leaving behind many questions as well as countless comforting memories of a gentle, sensitive soul …”
The brain goes numb.
If we were fully cognizant, it would be unbearable.
Leaving behind many questions as well as countless comforting memories.
“ … how could I still be informed while staying sane? Could I feel at peace when there seemed be an increasing amount of global instability?”
And she answered, “Then, I discovered the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of stoicism.“
According to wikipedia, “Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived, flourishing life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing certain virtues in everyday life such as courage or temperance and living in accordance with nature.”
The article was interesting and worth the 5 minutes that the website decided it might take me to read it.
I really liked her section being relaxed.
Relaxed is something I have always aspired to.
Relaxation is something I rarely find.
I guess I should have been a runner.
Not a jogger.
But a runner.
A sprinter.
As Sam Mussabini says in the movie, Chariots of Fire, “... a short sprint is run on nerves. It’s tailor-made for neurotics.“
Ms. Delaney writes under the heading, Be Relaxed:
The Greeks had a word for the state of mind we need to cultivate to remain calm: ataraxia.
Ataraxia is a state where you are free from distress and worry. Ancient philosophers believed achieving ataraxia created an emotional homeostasis, where the effect wouldn’t just be a more stable base-level mood, but one that would hopefully flow out to the people around you.
If you are more tranquil, you will be less likely to react or combust if something doesn’t go your way.
Imagine that your flight is delayed because of bad weather. You could react and take out your anger and frustration on the airline staff (who have no power to change the weather) or you could accept that the situation is out of your control – and remain calm and chilled.
With ataraxia, not only do you not ruin your own day, you avoid ruining other people’s too. In a tranquil state you may even make better decisions.
Ideally, someone in a state of ataraxia is not gripped by high emotions – such as lust, envy or fear. Rather, they have used the control test to understand what they can control, and what they can’t.
I had to look up how ataraxia is pronounced.
Say anorexia but swap Atar for Anor and you’ve got it.
Can’t wait until I tell someone I am embracing ataraxia and wait for them to want to check my weight.
I really like that last sentence.
Ideally, someone in a state of ataraxia is not gripped by high emotions – such as lust, envy or fear. Rather, they have used the control test to understand what they can control, and what they can’t.
More to the point, the last part of the last sentence.
… understand what they can control, and what they can’t.
I am not sure that those Stoic fellers in ancient Greece ever met Dutch people.
I won’t say that the Dutch part of me isn’t happy unless I am worrying about something whether I can control that thing or not but I will say, it sure feels like it sometime.
If nothing else to worry about, there is the weather.
And if the weather is nice, then, like the joke goes, Calvinism is the concern that someone somewhere in the world is having a good time.
Ataraxia.
… understand what they can control, and what they can’t.
In his book, That Time of Year (Arcade Publishing, New York, 2020), Garrison Keillor wrote:
My classmate Margaret Keenan, who became a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She didn’t claim to heal people but to lead them toward some sort of understanding. I never heard her speak with contempt or derision about anyone, not even Death, whom she saw coming a long way off and met with serenity.
She didn’t claim to heal people but to lead them toward some sort of understanding.
That, for me, was about the best description of therapy I had ever read.
Lead them toward some sort of understanding.
And one of those things needed to be understood is what we can control and what we can’t.
Accept that the situation is out of your control – and remain calm and chilled.
I am not good at this.
Also if I am making that effort to remain calm and chill, forces outside my control seem to demand that I make an effort at gaining control of out of control situations whether such control is possible or not or maybe even if advisable or not.
Sometimes a level of plausible deniability is a good thing.
But I want to try.
And I will try.
I will shoot for achieving ataraxia.
A level of ataraxia that creates an emotional homeostasis, where the effect wouldn’t just be a more stable base-level mood, but one that would hopefully flow out to the people around me.
Ataraxic I guess.
Why not?
Hey, after the beach, who wants to go for a beer?
Just a November Day in the Low Country and looking ataraxic!
true believers just don’t see things the way they are because if they did …
Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are.
Evidence contrary to the belief can be staring you straight in the face, and you won’t see it…
True believers just don’t see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn’t be true believers anymore.
Philip Caputo in Acts of Faith, Vintage, 2005.
I am not pointing any fingers at anyone who anyone might be thinking of when they think of anyone who thinks they are the True believers.
Far be it from me to suggest that anyone who might be able support the candidacy of a person who is, shall we say, under the cloud of some 90 plus criminal indictments and at the same time is making a public claim of fraud where over 60 court cases have investigated and found no fraud, truly must be believing something.
To paraphrase Mr. Caputo, evidence contrary to the belief can be staring them straight in the face, and they won’t see it.
The act of not seeing marks them as the true believers far more accurately than anything I could accomplish with a little finger pointing.
No Haiku For You 