stare at the sunset
and wonder why it has no
impact on you. How …

Follow the pedestrian path to the Williamsburg Bridge. This will take you well out of your way, but you think it might be a nice idea to watch the sunset from the bridge.

As you arrive at the midpoint of the bridge and see the sun going down, take a deep breath and try hard to live in the moment. This will be impossible for you. You haven’t been able to enjoy a sunset since you upped your dose of venlafaxine.

Stare at the sunset and wonder why it has no impact on you. How is something so viscerally, timelessly beautiful leaving you completely cold? How is it possible that your antidepressant is keeping you functional but also stifling any semblance of spiritual epiphany?

Adapted from the short story A G.P.S. ROUTE FOR MY ANXIETY by JESSE EISENBERG (New Yorker, Feb 27, 2023, Issue 2 Volume 99).

Mr. Eisenberg relates a walk outside in the style of turn by turn instructions from his GPS.

The spice sprinkled on top of the words, is the feeling from Mr. Eisenberg expressed through his anxiety.

A funny piece and at the same time, so very sad.

No triggers.

No reasons.

No explanations.

Just the anxiety.

A feeling so overwhelming of the soul that Mr. Eisenberg writes, How is something so viscerally, timelessly beautiful leaving you completely cold?

He wraps up a lot of life in one short walk.

Here is the story shamelessly repurposed from the New Yorker.

A G.P.S. ROUTE FOR MY ANXIETY

FROM: Home

TO: Local Y.M.C.A.

ESTIMATED TIME: Five hours

Exit your apartment through the service entrance so you don’t have to make small talk with the doorman, who resents you.

Upon exiting, turn left. Going right would obviously be quicker, but you might run into the woman from your building whose name you don’t remember.

Make a quick left at the rack of Citi Bikes. Avoid looking directly at the bikes and being reminded that you don’t have an active life style.

Dangerously cross the street in the middle of the block to avoid the bodega where you embarrassed yourself last week by going in drunk and ordering Ben & Jerry’s from the deli section.

Walk straight for three blocks in the wrong direction so that you can pass the movie theatre where you met your first girlfriend, Shira. Things seemed so much simpler then. Why couldn’t you just have proposed to Shira? Did you think she would wait around for you to grow up? She was an incredibly appealing person, and many people liked her. It was hubris to think that she would wait for you.

As you pass the theatre, it will occur to you that you should have proposed there. Shira would have thought it was so romantic. You could have cutesily conscripted the theatre staff to be in on the proposal. They could have done something kitschy but sweet, like hiding the ring in a tub of popcorn, and Shira might have said something charming, like “I wish you had proposed to me with some Raisinets.” You would have laughed and kissed her. Your life would have taken a nice turn with Shira. You would be a father now, maybe.

Make an extreme right to avoid the movie theatre. Walk briskly for several minutes to shake off the feeling of what could have been.

Take out your cell phone and pretend to be on an important call because you’re about to pass some canvassers for the A.S.P.C.A. Your mix of narcissism and self-hatred is so deep and convoluted that you can’t even bring yourself to spare five seconds to save animals.

This might be a nice time to listen to a podcast—maybe one from the BBC that doesn’t overlap with your own life and make you feel competitive. Something about the Bauhaus movement might be comforting.

Make a left for no other reason than to pass the office building where you interned for that documentary-film company when you thought that documentaries were going to change the world.

Make an immediate hard right to avoid the corner where you were fired by the documentary-film company for being too vocal at meetings.

Follow the pedestrian path to the Williamsburg Bridge. This will take you well out of your way, but you think it might be a nice idea to watch the sunset from the bridge.

As you arrive at the midpoint of the bridge and see the sun going down, take a deep breath and try hard to live in the moment. This will be impossible for you. You haven’t been able to enjoy a sunset since you upped your dose of venlafaxine.

Stare at the sunset and wonder why it has no impact on you. How is something so viscerally, timelessly beautiful leaving you completely cold? How is it possible that your antidepressant is keeping you functional but also stifling any semblance of spiritual epiphany?

Turn back and exit the bridge.

Walk uptown for several minutes, searching for any meaning in your life and not finding it.

Arrive at your destination, the local Y.M.C.A., which is actually five blocks from your apartment.

It is now dark out.

Stand outside the Y.M.C.A. for several minutes, watching other people go in.

Some of the people look strong.

Some of the people look tall.

Some of the people look mean.

Make a U-turn when safe.

Head back home.

abroad in the marsh
terminal sea somehow soul
seems suddenly free

Adapted from The Marshes of Glynn by Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,—
Emerald twilights,—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;—
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire,—
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;—

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,—
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the Marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark:—
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low,—
Thus—with your favor—soft, with a reverent hand
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!),
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run;
’Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run,
And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men, 100
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

time present time past
future eternally
unredeemable

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

From Burnt Norton as it appears in Four Quartets (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1943) by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Burnt Norton opens with two lines in Greek.

τοΰ λόγου δ’έόντος ξυνοΰ ζώουσιν οί πολλοί
ώς ίδίαν έχοντες φρόνησιν.

And …

όδoς άνω κάτω μία και ώυτή

They are both quotes from Heraclitus.

“Though wisdom is common, the many live as if they have wisdom of their own”

“the way upward and the way downward is one and the same.”

But to what purpose?

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves …

I do not know.

All time is unredeemable.

(Full disclosure, the video included with this post was created by Brett, my friend and coworker here on the Island. Brett has a pretty cool job. His is the effort to capture what it is that makes you want to spend your vacation on the island. He does a pretty good job with what he has to work with. One of the perks of this job is getting to see his stuff before the rest of the world does.)

other people’s words
keep me from sliding into
the canyon of doom

I was attracted by the headline, A Secret for Falling Asleep So Good It’s a British National Treasure.

I was intrigued to read when the writer wrote, “Most nights I don’t sleep well, so to relax, I often listen to audiobooks or the radio. Other people’s words keep me from sliding into the canyon of doom, where all around shouts of “you’re screwed” reverberate.“

It can be a problem reading (or listening) yourself to sleep.

I have been a reader-in-bed for as long as I can remember.

I was never a flashlight-under-the-blankets reader.

I just kept the lights on and kept quiet.

Anything that kept me quiet was okay with anyone who has ever spent time with me.

Today, I say good night to the wife with the idea that I will spend a few minutes reading before turning out the lights.

All too often I am still reading when she comes to bed and even more often, I get up and go read in the other room so she can turn the lights out.

I get too interested in what I am reading and there it is.

Reading as an inducer of sleep has rarely worked out for me, though I have tried.

In the book, The Winds of War, Herman Wouk has a scene where one of characters can’t sleep and she looks at a wall of books saying, “What can I read? Ah, Graham Wallas – the very man. I’ll be asleep in half an hour.“

I had never heard of Graham Wallas.

According to Wikipedia, Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 – 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics and such a pedigree indeed would nominate Mr. Wallas to be the very man to induce sleep.

I thought two things when I read that line.

I thought, maybe he would put me to sleep so I should give his writing a try.

He didn’t.

One of my problems is that I have to like what I read to take the time to read it and I did not like reading Graham Wallas’ writing and I got too agitated not liking his writing to be able to get to sleep so it was a real stupid experiment.

They other thing I thought was what a great literary device to slam some one.

Put people in a novel, then have them make wonderful pithy comments about someone’s writing.

Brilliant!

As I said, I was attracted by the headline, A Secret for Falling Asleep So Good It’s a British National Treasure.

Shocked I was to read that, according to Ms. Grace Lindon, the secret for falling asleep so good it’s a British National Treasure is listening to something called the Shipping Forecast.

Not the forecast that is read out on air by the BBC at 5:02 a.m., 12:01 p.m., 5:54 p.m. and 12:48 a.m. G.M.T., with each briefing beginning with the same words: “And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office“, but compilations of forecasts.

Productions created by pasting a bunch of forecasts together.

Ms. Linden writes, “when heard in hourlong compilations, the Shipping Forecast is poetic and hypnotic, a free-form ode to the seas.”

Click here for an example.

By chance I am very familiar with the Shipping Forecast.

I am very familiar with the Shipping Forecast for two reasons.

One is that I listen to broadcasts of Cricket Matches for the ECB or England and Wales Cricket Board on the BBC (via You Tube).

These broadcasts are often interrupted when the commenter pauses the match coverage to say, “Long Wave listeners are going away for the Shipping Forecast” and then a few minutes later, long wave listeners are welcomed back to the broadcast.

The other reason is that I know Shipping Forecast is that it is introduced by the music, Sailing By.

If anything would put anyone to sleep I would have bet is was the sound of Sailing By but nope, it is the Shipping Forecast itself, in long long recorded compliations.

Ms. Linden writes:

Vastness, as such, is appealing, and the world is so very vast.

Long-wave broadcasts travel far, hugging the planet as they make their way overseas.

Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

For eons, there was nothing but the stars and estuaries, the winds, the shore.

After making his way out of the mythical cave, man set off to the sea, where the water proffered new realms for exploration.

And so, like the ancient mariners before me, I am often awake in the middle of the night, falling asleep to the mysteries of the deep.

Since moving to the coast, lines like the one, Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

I like that.

I like that a lot.

I will say it out loud the next time I am walking along the beach and watch those elemental forces at play.

Those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

It’s what I get to do on my lunch hour and it is one of those things that keeps me from sliding into the canyon of doom.

everyone has their
pet theory but everyone
has different pet

When I work in the office I have to drive over the series of bridges that connect Hilton Head Island with the mainland of the South Carolina Low Country.

Between the mainland and Hilton Head Island is another piece of land known as Pinckney Island.

A bridge takes you over Mackay Creek between the main land and Pinckney and then over Skull Creek to Hilton Head.

There is a two lane bridge going out and another two lane bridge coming in for a total of four bridges.

3 of the four bridges were built in the 1980’s.

The oldest section, the first bridge going from the mainland to Pinckney Island was built in 1957.

While the bridge has passed its end-of-life service date there is no truth to the rumor that the United States Corps of Engineers has condemned the bridge.

There is no truth to the rumor that the United States Corps of Engineers issued an unsafe-to-use certificate for the bridge.

What is true is that since the high tides of Hurricane Matthew so severely undercut the mainland anchorage of the bridge, the United States Corps of Engineers has refused to issue a safe-to-use certificate for the bridge.

The City of Hilton Head, the Country of Beaufort and the State of South Carolina have been researching, planning and projecting a new bridge since 2018.

Everyone agrees they bridge needs to be replaced.

That is where the agreement stops.

And there has been little agreement since.

Somehow, the plan to create a six lane bridge with a bike and pedestrian lane is going to make Hilton Head Island look like Los Angeles.

Somehow the new bridge will scare the turtles.

Want to stop anything down here in the low country, play the turtle card.

Recently the Beaufort County announced it was their bridge and they were going ahead regardless of what the town of Hilton Head said.

The wheels are in motion.

Beaufort County announced they are taking bids on their time and traffic study and hope to have that in place soon and what the study is studied, final construction plans will be open for bidding.

I doubt this new bridge will be built in my lifetime.

I know Hilton Head is a special case and South Carolina is a special case.

What I mean by that is hard to explain if you don’t live here or haven’t been following the Murdaugh Murder case.

Still I read with interest the opinion piece, The Great Construction Mystery, By Ezra Klein (NYT 2/5/2023), that started:

Here’s something odd: We’re getting worse at construction. Think of the technology we have today that we didn’t in the 1970s. The new generations of power tools and computer modeling and teleconferencing and advanced machinery and prefab materials and global shipping. You’d think we could build much more, much faster, for less money, than in the past. But we can’t. Or, at least, we don’t.

Mr. Klien quoted a Mr. Ed Zarenski who runs the market analysis firm Construction Analytics.

Mr. Zarenski said:

And behind all that is paperwork, and paperwork, and more paperwork. “The work we do today takes hundreds more people in the office to track and bring to completion,” he told me. “The level of reporting that you have to send to the government, to the insurance companies, to the owner, to show you’re meeting all the requirements on the job site, all of that has increased. And so the number of people you need to produce that has increased.”

This, Syverson said, was closest to his view on the construction slowdown, though he didn’t know how to test it against the data. “There are a million veto points,” he said. “There are a lot of mouths at the trough that need to be fed to get anything started or done. So many people can gum up the works.”

I have a brother in law who is involved in all sorts of building projects.

At one time, he was part of the group that built that then Sears Tower in Chicago under the Richard Daley regime.

I asked him about the changes in building and he referenced Daley.

He claimed that for the Sears Tower, all it took was one meeting, a meeting with Daley, to get the OK on the project.

Once Daley said yes all other questions, issues and problems went away.

To put up a super market in Livonia, I had to go to 17 zoning meetings he told me.

There are a lot of mouths at the trough that need to be fed to get anything started or done.

So many people can gum up the works.

Everyone has their pet theory.

But everyone has a different pet.

And I get to drive on that bridge to get to work.