7.14.2025 – anchor yourself in

anchor yourself in
the reality of time passing
is fundamental

From the article, “No, age isn’t just a number – and the sooner we realise that, the happier we will be” Moya Sarner in the Guardian.

Moya Sarner is an NHS psychotherapist who writes about the terrible things that can happen in people’s lives and how to deal with them.

Her headlines include, I do not need a £100 hairbrush. So why have I spent so long fantasising about one?, Terrible things happen in life – but it is possible to recover from them, Therapy isn’t about life hacks. The best solutions are simpler – and more complex and Life let you down again? Congratulations – you’re growing.

Kind of depressing to just read the headlines.

So why would I waste my time on the one aging?

Somehow, someway I will turn 65 on Thursday and I am kind of happily mystified to find myself here.

Nothing much will change on the next day, Friday morning.

I will continue to work as long as I can because I need to work as long as I can but I got a good job that I enjoying working at as long as I can.

But I will be 65.

So the headline, No, age isn’t just a number – and the sooner we realise that, the happier we will be caught my interest.

Ms. Sarner writes:

Sitting in a cafe recently, I saw a poster advertising a barista training course for young people interested in a career in hot beverages. Things in the NHS being what they are, I enjoyed losing myself in a fantasy future spent standing behind a sleek, shiny machine, having witty exchanges with customers and colleagues as I skilfully poured smooth, foaming milk into silky dark espresso, tipping and turning each cup to create my own unique artworks on the coffee surface.

That was until I read the small print, which included the rather brutal definition of “young people” as aged 18 to 24. I realised, with an internal gasp, that my limited ability to pour liquid without spilling it was not the only obstacle to this career choice. There was a core personal reality here from which I had become totally untethered: the passing of time.

This untethering is bad news for anyone interested in building a better life. A lot of nonsense is spoken and sung and written on plates and pencil cases about how we should all stay young and never grow old. But I’ve discovered as a therapist and as a patient in psychoanalysis that the capacity to anchor yourself in the reality of time passing is fundamental to good mental health, and to the potential for life to get better.

That old one way passage of time.

Gosh.

It made me wonder if Ms. Sarner took the time to watch the people working in the cafe?

I have no doubt I couldn’t do the job.

I also had to stop at that last line.

She points to … the potential for life to get better.

Pretty thin gruel I guess, but if that’s what you got.

Though it makes me feel good about missing Ms. Sarner’s other stories.

Maybe I have read too much history.

May I have thought about that mental game where I say to myself, 15 years before I was born, World War 2 ended.

End of World War2?

Why that was a lifetime before I was born!

For someone born in 2025, 15 years ago it would have been 2010.

2010?

Wasn’t that just yesterday?

I can’t say I embraced the passage of time, but I understood it was passing and I have happily watched the parade as it went by.

I don’t need the protentional for life to get better as life is good.

Got no complaints.

For afterwards I believe in God and the saving grace of Jesus and for the here and now I pray for guidance and I pray for acceptance.

Aside from that I am just me.

Someone once told me that they never understood how someone could ‘be born to be hung’ and then they met me.

Never quite sure what that person met but with hanging being out of favor, I felt empower to just enjoyed life.

As Mr. Twain said, “I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.”

In place of Ms. Sarner’s article I offer Big Bill and poor old Macbeth when it all starts to make sense to that feller and he says:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

As I said, nothing will change when I wake up on Friday on the other side of 65.

Well, maybe there are some small changes I can make to my life, but you better look hard to spot them.

5.19.2025 – more important to

more important to
make a good cup of coffee
and good piece of toast

Adapted from the line “It’s more important to make a very good cup of coffee and a very good piece of toast than it is to worry about Josef Stalin, because I can something about breakfast and I can’t do anything about Stalin, and I am sure he’s having a wonderful breakfast.” from WLT: A Radio Romance by Garrison Keillor (Viking Press, New York, 1991).

I have used this quote a lot but that is okay as I have written about my morning toast a lot.

Monday, like most Monday’s bring enough to start the day just being Monday without the rest of the things in life crawling out of the cupboard.

The coffee had made itself correctly and was sitting there waiting for me to pour a cup.

But what next?

I first went an opened the blinds to let in the morning but when I turned around the question of what next was still waiting to be answered.

I opened tablet to read my Bible and read, “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” James 3:17-18 (New International Version).

And that made me smile which is a good way to start a day.

This was a day worth starting with toast.

I can’t do much about what is going on in this world and I certainly can’t do much about the current person in office but I know that feller is not worried about me though if he happened to read that verse, I would think he might have few things to worry about.

I am not even sure he is having a wonderful breakfast.

And I am going to make some very good toast.

I have a head start on the very good toast game as I am using bread I bake just for these moments.

Got out the bread board and my bread knife, picked a place on the loaf that I baked on Saturday (after getting home from the beach) about 1/4 inch wide and start cutting, letting the knife do the work and in seconds I have 2 perfect slices of bread.

Not your whimpy store bought plastic wrapped bread.

But bread with meaning and with heft to it and a thick crust.

Into the toaster and push down and the warm red light glows out the top of the toaster’s slots along with the wonderful smell of toasting bread.

My recipe for perfect toast is that I need to toast it twice.

Once it pops up, down it goes for another cycling of toasting.

The second time it pops up, the bread carries the heat so well, you can burn your fingers if you aren’t careful when you move to the plate.

Then I cover every surface part of the toast with butter.

Butter that melts quickly and sinks into the crust and the light brown, beautifully toasted surface.

Then I cut the slices into two halves, fill my coffee cup and start my day.

You have to respect toast made this way.

No jelly, no spreads.

Single bites and each bite chewed slowly, savoring the butter and the crunch.

Respect the toast.

Then coffee, then bite of toast, sit back and chew and think.

It is true.

It’s more important to make a very good cup of coffee and a very good piece of toast than it is to worry about Josef Stalin, because I can something about breakfast and I can’t do anything about Stalin, and I am sure he’s having a wonderful breakfast.

5.3.2025 – be joyful in hope

be joyful in hope,
patient in affliction and
faithful in prayer

When you start your day with your tablet on the online Bible Gateway and the verse of the day is Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” and all I have to do is add the word ‘and’ to get to a 5 – 7- 5 syllable ratio (which I know is not the true definition of a haiku – see my section on ‘What is …’ ) it was too good to not use.

Be joyful in hope.

Patient in affliction.

Faithful in prayer.

In a time of oh-what-can-i-do-oh-what-can-i-do, it kind of sums it up.

As I already added an ‘and’ might I suggest to add a snippet from the Psalms?

Be joyful in hope.

Patient in affliction.

Faithful in prayer.

Be still, and know that I am God.

3.22.2025 – what gets me going

what gets me going
what wakes me up and alert
trigger frustration

Anyone who reads these posts will know that I do not like getting up in the morning.

Of late it isn’t the getting up anymore that gets me.

I live in the low country of South Carolina where I found that I am sensitive to the spring pollen that coats the landscape for months down here and after a night of being vertical in bed, trying to sleep, it is with some relief that I get up in the morning so my sinuses will drain and I can breathe.

This morning, up early to breathe, I got to think’in.

My Dad was always bringing home odd things.

He was a dentist and he filled his waiting room with good magazines like Smithsonian, The New Yorker and American Heritage along with the usual waiting room magazines.

Famously one of us kids once left a copy of Mad Magazine in the waiting room once while waiting for Dad for something.

The next day Dad’s patients ripped out all the subscription blanks and one old guy telling Dad, it was the best magazine he had ever read.

In off hours Dad would page though these magazines and these odd ads would catch his eye and he would tear out these odd offers and send off checks and later come home with these odd things.

In my desk drawer I have a little telescope that is also a microscope which I always thought was some little toy thing until I used The Google and found that it was a MULTIFUNKTIONALE KLEINOPTIK EMOSKOP or a combined telescope, magnifier and microscope made by Seibert-Wetzlar, one of the finest optical manufactures in history.

I had to read the Google page to learn how to use it.

But where Dad found it and bought it, I have no idea.

Dad loved bird calls and had a drawer full.

One was the little red spool with a turn key that when turned, made different squeaking squawking noises which were supposed to call birds.

Not sure it worked but he carried one every where.

One time Dad came up with a skull.

Not just any skull mind you.

But a completely prepared medical training skull.

The jaw was spring loaded and on one side of the face the top layer of bone was removed to reveal what was below and on the other the surface bone was in place, but sections were hinged so they could lifted to show what was underneath.

The skull cap could be removed and all arteries, veins and nerve connections were marked out.

Why?

Why did Dad order this and bring it home?

I mean who looks through a magazine, there was no online shopping, and sees an ad for a prepared human skull and says, “I want that” or “My wife would love that”?

The skull didn’t sit out on the table or shelf like a lot of his stuff, but we would get it out to amaze our friends or to bring to school for show and tell.

You never knew what Dad might bring home.

There was this time I was watching TV with my brothers and Dad came in through the front door of the house, not the back door off the garage.

He noticed Mom was upstairs.

He left the door open, walked over and uplugged the TV in front of us and took it away to his car.

Dad came back in struggling to carry a much bigger TV, which he put in place and reconnected and turned on.

He looked at us and said, “Don’t say anything” and went back out the front door.

We had a new big TV and we didn’t say anything.

Dad came back after parking his car in the garage and sat down as if nothing had happened and enjoyed his new TV and didn’t say anything.

No one would have noticed but the next morning my baby brother Al looked at the TV for bit then found Mom and asked, “How do you turn the new TV on?”

You never knew what Dad might bring home.

He would have loved Amazon.

So why am I telling you all this.

I was thinking about that skull.

From this skull, I learned where the sinuses are in my head.

On bad pollen days down here in the low country, I could take a sharpie pen and outline on my face where it hurts and in my mind, I can see that skull, and I am outlining my sinuses.

Under my eyes, right under my cheek bones and above my eyes in my forehead, right under my eyebrows.

I get out of bed in the morning, and in my mind I can see my sinuses in my face tip as if I was tipping a sand glass, and feel the pollen drain away and air start to seep through.

So I get up.

I get up though I don’t want to, so I can breathe.

That is not to say, I wake up.

That takes some doing.

It takes coffee and a lot of coffee.

Since getting a new coffee maker with a bigger pot, I am back to 4 or 5 mugs of coffee, not sipped, but poured into my body.

And it takes my morning reading which takes less time than it did as I now gloss over any headline with the current president’s name in it.

After The Google News, the Guardian and the New York Times, I am starting to feel awake and more alert.

Time for the games and I start with the New York Times Connections.

It is 16 random words that you have to fit into 4 groups of 4 words over something they have in common in four guesses.

How the words are connected are rated into 4 categories.

The yellow grouping is easy.

The green grouping is less easy.

The blue grouping is hard.

And the purple grouping rarely makes any sense and you assemble these words because they are the only ones left.

I find that when I finish with Connections I am pretty much awake and alert.

I was thinking about this this morning after playing Connections as I was very much awake.

I had been thinking that this game had to be stimulating and really got my brain working.

I had been thinking that this game got me to think and to wake up.

This morning it hit.

All 16 words started with T.

I used up all my guesses quickly.

I lost and lost fast.

The answers were revealed and I read them over saying OH COME ON again and again.

Who, I thought, would make those connections.

Who, I thought, knew what that word could mean …

Who, who, who and what, what what …

Boy Howdy, was I mad.

Boy Howdy!, was I frustrated.

Boy! Howdy!, was I … awake.

That’s the trigger that starts my day.

Frustration.

Boy! Howdy!

1.25.2025 – sunlight and death were

sunlight and death were
upon the earth – no one was
wholly rational

All the way through there were two lines of action going on: the visible one, out in the open, where there were flags and rumbling guns and marching men to be seen, and the invisible one which affected and colored all the rest. Sunlight and death were upon the earth in the spring of 1862, and no one was wholly rational.

On the surface, everything was fine. Nearly two hundred thousand young men had been drilled, disciplined, clothed, armed, and equipped. They innocently thought themselves veterans. They had roughed it for a whole autumn and winter under canvas, knew what it was like to sleep on bare ground in the rain, had learned the intricate, formalized routines by which marching columns transformed themselves into battle lines, and they had been brought to a razor edge of keenness. The great unpredictable that lay ahead of them seemed a bright adventure, for in the 1860s cynicism was not a gift which came to youth free, in advance; it had to be earned, and all illusions had to be lost the hard way.

From Mr. Lincoln’s Army by Bruce Catton (Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY, 1951).

I got my first Bruce Catton book, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, the book this excerpt comes from when I was around 10 years old.

My Grand father found a pile of books that were being thrown out by the Church Library and he snatched it, telling the folks in charge that he had a grand son who wanted it.

And I did.

I did want it.

Even though I had never heard of it, I knew I wanted it.

I know I read and I have read it several times since, but I cannot imagine what this passage meant to me when I was 10.

Everything, to me, about the Civil War was a bright adventure and maybe still is today.

It remains a bright adventure even after reading the best description of serving in a war, the speech of the deaf old gentleman from Fayetteville, Mr. McRae at the Wilkes’ barbeque in Gone with the Wind when he said, “You fire-eating young bucks, listen to me. You don’t want to fight. I fought and I know. Went out in the Seminole War and was a big enough fool to go to the Mexican War, too. You all don’t know what war is. You think it’s riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a hero. Well, it ain’t. No, sir! It’s going hungry, and getting the measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the wet. And if it ain’t measles and pneumonia, it’s your bowels. Yes sir, what war does to a man’s bowels—dysentery and things like that—”

But I digress.

What I wonder about today is what would Bruce Catton made of the current state of affairs in the politics of the United States.

After decades of studying and writing about the Civil War Catton wrote, “The dismaying world we confront was given its vast intricacy and its perilous speed by human beings for the benefit of human beings. The one basic resource we have always had to rely on is the innate intelligence, energy and good will of the human race. It is facing an enormous challenge, but then it always has; and it meets each one only to confront another. If now we give way to the gloom of the apostles of catastrophe we are of course in the deepest sort of trouble. The old reliance is at our service. It can bear us up if we put our full weight on it.”

Right now, at this point, it seems that sunlight and death are upon the earth and no one is wholly rational.

We are facing an enormous challenge, but then we always have; and we meet each one only to confront another.

If now we give way to the gloom of the apostles of catastrophe we are of course in the deepest sort of trouble.

The old reliance is at our service.

It can bear us up if we put our full weight on it.