Visiting New York City

New York, like any world city, is a concentration of wealth and ambition.  It is also, by historic standards, a marker of civilization, for wherever there is specialized human civilization there have been cities.  In a way, New York was the first of the modern cities, not built upon ruins of the past nor a gradual expansion of an ancient trading center, but springing up almost whole-cloth from the bedrock.  It is no longer the city with the most, if it ever was, and is certainly not the biggest, but nonetheless New York, like any modern city, is impressive.  And with its energy and power, still relevant to the world.

Certainly its inhabitants would all have us think so, for they think of themselves as smart, aggressive and rich or soon-to-be rich.  There are great successes, of course, but even those of lesser station consider themselves in an elite.  The street vendors, the drug dealers, the simple flaneurs totally accept that they are the best at what they do and, by world standards, they are elite.  You can easily separate the natives from the tourists in the parks and streets by their attitude, which is friendly but always somewhat condescending, and always in a hurry.

Physically, New York is a great pile of achievement, history compounded in stone, metal and glass.  On every block there are vast stories of futures dreamed and accomplished and lost.  Every step is a unique stunning view, and for those who take the time, every thought is connected and everything ties together in a humanistic saga.

For those not part of the city itself, it is best appreciated as a tourist.  But not the typical tourist, marking checks in a “must see” death race, but rather a tourist from another time, or a different planet, or a far dimension.  The proper approach is to look around and up and down and gawk, marvel, observe, and absorb the energy.  This is the true human ecology.  This is sociology in action.  This is what humans are really all about.

For example, imagine the Olympian and Roman Gods on holiday, perhaps led around by Hermes (waving a flag or newspaper in the air to keep them together), dressed in togas and jabbering in archaic Greek.  They would scarcely be noticed, of course.  Zeus would be stunned at the power and confusion of Times Square, Dianna would be floored by the exhibits at the Natural History Museum, Venus would weep at the beauty on display at the Metropolitan.  Hades, of course, would be ecstatic over the subway, and especially enthralled by the Penn Station LIRR terminal.  Like all older people, they would see that their time had passed, and they would be overwhelmed by the changes.

Of course they, and everyone, knows that humans move in cycles, and that everything constructed is due for destruction, that cycles will occur.  Life itself is transient, as are humans, as are their cities.  Palmyra, Xanadu, Tenochtitlan are no more as they were, in time New York will join them in ruin, perhaps submerged under the rising seas.  All achievement is folly, insist the critics of progress.  There is only cosmic emptiness all about, in the long run it is all vanity.  We should not be fooled by the lovely parks, high bridges, and engineering marvels, for someday they too will be dust again. 

But this day, right now (which is what really is for anyone) is glorious, proud, energized and happy.  Visit New York in a proper frame of mind and it is easy to develop empathy for everyone, and to fall into dreams which hope for a wonderful future.  Yes, a kind of love of being able to experience everything.  That is a very human response to the fantastic signals from a very human saga.
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I lived in a variety of cities before finally settling down in the Long Island suburbs.   And of course we’ve done our share of vacation time in various cities here and there.  Our home is within rail commuting distance of Manhattan, so I periodically took the kids in to visit and get a taste of the big time, and also kept my own interests tuned with occasional visits.  For my money, there is no amusement park thrill ride as grand as the subway, where a potential attack by a madman (not some fake funhouse apparition) always lends a frisson of danger, and the rats and the dirt are thrillingly real.

Since I retired I have tried to make it a few times a month or so, sometimes with a plan to see an art exhibit or some special attraction, but often just to roam the streets and try to actually see things I have never seen before.  It’s amazing how much I missed over the years, hurrying by buildings that I can now take a minute or two to actually look at.  The sheer scale of the changes over time, and the grand possibilities added by knowing the history of a site more deeply, are breathtaking.

But mostly, I like to go to feed off the energy.  I enjoy watching the purposeful stride of ambition, the optimism of everyone (even though it is often reflected only in the tension on their faces as they scurry on to their next hopeful assignation).  Above all, it is a city for the young, for those who are young and who think they are young.  And to visit is to drink, al little, from the fountain of youth for a short time.  I come away with plans and hopes of my own (although I admit they now usually drain away on the train ride home.)

For my money, it’s a blessing to live near a world city, to be in a small way affected by its rhythms, to inhabit a strange zone somewhere between inhabitant and tourist.  When I get tired or bored or depressed I can always get a quick fix with a day trip.  My wife thinks it is crowded, and noisy, and dirty, and she is right.  But it is also so much else, that the wonder far overbalances the hassle.  I hope that cities like this remain so for a long time to come.

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New York glorious proud and bold,
I saw the number 5 in gold
River parks, fantastic views,
Special landmarks old and new
People rushing, tourists stare
Stranded here while going there
It’s all been said, it’s all been done
Yet still unique to everyone
I come to visit, not to stay,
An older fellow, in the way
Quite happy in my minor part
Participating in the art
That countless other humans prized
The essence of what’s civilized.
NYC
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The main reason to travel has always been to open your mind, to become aware that the way that you live and what you do and think is not the only way to live, do, and think.  That is possible even by visiting a strange place (to you) in your community, of course, but often it takes the shock of the really strange and the loss of the familiar to allow you to be fully aware of the differences in people.

The first thing you always find on a visit to somewhere exotic is that the people there are not stereotypes.  Everyone in Manhattan is not like the movie stars (although some are) and everyone else is not involved one way or another in crime and drugs (although some are.)  The millions of people going about their business are, in fact, one person at a time getting through moments one at a time just as you are.  Having a good day, or a bad day, or just another day.  Needing to eat, and pee, and get on with whatever needs to be gotten on with.

You have a right to gawk as a tourist, in New York or anywhere else, because you will not fit in unless you actually inhabit a place for a while.  There is, fortunately, a large niche reserved in most cities for tourists, who bring lots of money and few ongoing unresolvable problems, unlike many of the permanent residents.  The government and businesses are happy to accept your money, and may even show it. 

And there is, actually, a lot to gawk at in a big city, not least of which is that it can exist for more than one day.  The complexity of the entire operation is overwhelming, when you think about sewers and food deliveries and garbage pickups and how and why these folks manage to keep getting along and don’t run (mostly) screaming into the night.  So let yourself go, take some screen shots, taste something different, and just enjoy the rush.  It’s your century, your time, and who knows if anyone else anywhen else will ever have the same opportunities you have.
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World cities represent civilization in its most refined and purest form.  An extraterrestrial anthropologist would no doubt discover that the most urbanized cultures are the most powerful, and in many perspectives all of human activities _ mining raw materials, growing food, industrial production, transporting goods, disposing of waste, not to mention intangibles like entertainment  and intellectual achievement _ either happen in cities or for cities by the rest of the globe. 

Even primitive man, we assume, clumped together as societies of tribes _ people are not solitary creatures and cannot grow in the wild after birth as such.  The rise of the million person metropolis is extremely recent, but simply a continuation of all trends since the discovery of agriculture ten thousand or so years ago.  Pretending everyone “really” wants to live close to the land and dispersed into small groups goes against every actual historical example during that time _ from Babylon and before, the bulk of civilized population was either flocking to cities or clustered around them.

Now a case can probably be made that civilization is awful, and we are happier living short active adventurous lives with disease and crippling injury (not to mention old age at thirty five or so) just part of the spice of existence.  From the evidence, that seems to be a desire isolated to a few prophets and their cultish audiences _ almost always young, healthy, and relatively isolated from the core of civilized being.  But for most of us, a city is a wonderful thing, and honestly day after day an urban lifestyle with  all its conveniences, attractions, and serendipity is far more desirable than growing corn and beans in the same old meadow trying to beat the winter and fight off the insect pests.  Even those in the rural areas are happy enough to have electricity, internet, and highway access to world trade goods.

New York City represents all of that to an ultimate degree.  The crowds are a concentration of many groups, many languages, many cultures and subcultures, even many virtual tribes, working together if not harmoniously at least in common tolerance.  And what results is by any stretch of the imagination magnificent.

Try some time to put yourself in the mind of that cosmic explorer, seeing the networks, the sewers, the roads, the traffic, the buildings, the parks, the conversations _ everything_ for the first time with clear senses.  Imagine the imaginings of the individuals who constructed it and continue to keep it going and make it even more. New York is a wonder of the universe, and one of our ultimate claims to represent something new and marvelous in the vast sweep of the universe.

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Jay, the New York City rat, hopped a ride on a produce truck one evening to visit his cousin Heather on Long Island.  She had long told him about the peace and quiet, the lovely grounds, the open space, a life away from the _ pardon the term _ rat race where he spent his days.  He met her around ten at night at the end of the driveway. 

It was indeed quite hushed, with the wind in the leaves , stars above, the perfume of flowers all around.  Jay asked “Ok, I’m here.  What do we do first?”

Heather said “Well, let’s get out of sight here, we’ll go over to my place under the shed in the back, and then we can think about dinner.”

“What do you mean, think about dinner?  Don’t you have any humans out here?  There must be a garbage bag or throwaway container somewhere.”

“Well, actually, not so much,” admitted Heather.  “It can be something of a problem, especially on non-pickup days.  They keep the trash in really tight containers, and a lot of time it’s in the house until the last minute.”

“Well, we just need to go into the basement and find it.”

“No, no!” Heather exclaimed.  “If they ever see us they call the exterminator right away and the exterminators out here are really ferocious.  We can make do with leftovers and fruit. My stash is still probably good, if the raccoons haven’t found it.”

“Raccoons?  You need to fight with raccoons for food?”  Jay was less and less entranced by the prospect of a week out here.  “Anything else I should know?”

“Well, on days when they put it out we might run into a dog…”

“Good God, Heather, you mean the humans don’t keep them in their apartments or on a leash like civilized people?”

“Not always,” she muttered apologetically.  “Oh, and of course there are always the cats roaming around and a few hawks now and then.  Surely you have nuisances, too”

“Not so much.  There’s a few falcons, but they prefer pigeons and squirrels.  Humans sometimes put down poisoned bait, but that’s for chumps.  If we don’t bother them, they don’t bother us, so we try to stay out of sight, except for the crazies.  And there’s ALWAYS food, everywhere, all the time, some of it still hot.  I hope you’re still planning to visit on a feast day like New Year’s or the Fourth.”

They spent a nice conversational evening, listening to the owls (another problem) and remembering old times.  Day was just breaking when Jay was awakened by the loudest blasts he had ever heard, even when he had lived down near that building site on 32^nd.  “What the hell is that!” he yelled.

“Oh, just the lawn crews mowing and blowing and scraping and whatever.  No, wait, that one might be a delivery truck for the kitchen redo down the street.  I KNOW you have a lot of noise where you are.”

“Yeah,” Jay admitted, “but it’s muffled in the tunnels.  This is insane.  Well, fair enough, where do we go and what do we do?”  He was ready for relaxation on vacation.

“Um, well, it’s mostly the yard here, if we’re careful not to be seen by the kids or the hawks or the cats or the dogs.  But the yard is magnificent, isn’t it?  Look at that lovely lawn. And the flowers.  And the serenity …” Heather had to raise her voice to be heard over the three-blower whining chorus.  “What do you usually do?”

“Me?  I have a hard time making up my mind most days,” responded Jay.  “The sewers go all over, I’ve only seen a fraction of them, the subways are a treat, there’s the people eating lunch in the parks for adventure.  I can take a trip on a garbage scow if I need to get away for a while.  And there’s always central park _ especially at night _ where I can just be alone and think and look at nature as it was intended to be seen _ tamed by humans and stripped of anything that might be dangerous to me.”

“Maybe humans have their uses,” acknowledged Heather.

“Well, if there’s enough of them anyway.  I sure wouldn’t want to live in the wilderness like poor Neil upstate on that organic farm.  Vegetables all day, dogs all over, foxes, paranoia, ycch.  But, you know, I’m not so sure I like this either…”

“Well, we all have our preferences,” noted Heather.

“So come visit sometime,” responded Jay, grabbing his hat and heading out to find some way back to paradise.  “I sure can show you a good time.  Honestly,I LOVE New York.”
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Any visit to a strange place can be wonderful, if we can take the time to really appreciate we are in a strange place and should be in a state of wonder.  That means that simply by declaring somewhere a strange place _ even if it is where we live or work _ we can have almost the same experience.  Admittedly, it is a lot easier when the quotidian cues that make things ordinary are missing.

New York _ any large city _ makes most of us rethink many of the mental habits we take for granted.  The weather, the transportation, the food vendors, the sights, the routes to follow are all different.  That is probably why going to different shopping malls can be so unsatisfying _ they are all basically the same layout with the same merchandise and goals.

The biggest problem, especially as we get older, is that for many of us _ at least those of us living relatively comfortably _ leaving our little nest is increasingly difficult.  And when we do go, these days, we tend to want everything with us _ a thick shell of food and drink and guidance restricting our contact with the strange, and assuring that the safety of our traveling cell is always close at hand.  And, as those of us who do continue to travel know, this is somewhat silly, because visiting places has never before been so easy nor safe nor comfortable.

So, for me, since it is easy and vast, visiting New York is a wonderful escape.  If you have access to any strange places _ parks, cities, countries _ certainly take advantage of what is close.  But if once or twice in your life you can manage New York, I think you will be well rewarded.  That reward will be in direct proportion to how much you wander the streets and parks on foot, get away from the tour groups, and take a few minor chances _ and especially how much you are willing to foolishly gawk and be a tourist idiot _ a stranger in a strange land.

Happiness

Happiness is a purely human state.  People may try to project it onto various animals and pets, but our experience of happiness is unique to our consciousness.  Surprisingly, we find there is no easy way to define it nor pin it down in words, although we can describe it endlessly.  There are no simple scientific methods to produce it, to measure it on some kind of scale, nor to experiment with what causes it.  It can come and go without warning in an instant, without seemingly any external circumstances changing at all, as can many of our emotions and moods.  Yet any child, any sane person, wants to be happy.

That makes happiness a mysterious phenomenon for our rational and logical culture.  Such ineffables are considered somehow dangerous and suspect, as if they are not real in the universe.  How can we find a handle on something that has indefinable extremes, and  no possible placement in “normal.”  What would normal happiness constitute?  And even at extremes, when most happy there are tiny fragments of being unhappy, as at most unhappy, there are always echoes of happiness.

And the various conditions that cause happiness vary tremendously, yet the experience seems to be constant and fixed.  Different people get happy at different times, from different things, yet they all claim that happiness is much alike.  It is an absolute condition, in a way, yet always relative to what might make us happier.  We invoke our multiple selves so that at any given moment we might be happy when looking at things one way, unhappy if thinking about them another.

Being happy is more our instinctual driver than what we think might bring it _ wealth or power or sex or freedom.  Pursuing happiness is enshrined in our cultural matrix, yet it achieving it _ wallowing in it _ is something to be feared and avoided.  Happy people are content and presumably do not want changes _ but change is progress.  Happy people are bad for progress, but we are told that in the future we will be happier if progress now is achieved, presumably through our current unhappiness.

And that causes manipulation by our leaders and condemnation by our preachers.  “You may think you are happy but …”:  your future will be bleak, god will punish you for eternity, you are wasting your life, you must try to accomplish more …  People or groups that are happy and content are variously lazy or stupid.  The grasshopper dies in winter, while the ant survives. Happy artists are failed artists.   Content individuals do not have the fire in the belly for entrepreneurial innovation.  But, just maybe, trading today’s happiness for various cosmic illusions of greater happiness to come is a bad thing, especially when pushed to extremes.   Consider that, when the sun is bright and the green world beckons, but you are forced once again to stare at your screens and limit your being to logical clouds of words.

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I’ve always managed to be reasonably happy, regardless of circumstance, and that has undoubtedly limited my worldly success.  Part of my happiness, of course, was realizing about how much worldly success I minimally required to live the life I wanted.  One of the fascinating things about human motivations, accomplishments, and evaluations is how intensely circular and self-referent they can become.

Should a happy person be an optimist, or a pessimist?  You can make a case for either, although I tend to fall into another group, which you could call the “que sera, sera” philosophy.  Those who expect things to get better are often relatively unhappy now and remain unhappy if their future hopes do not come true.  Those who expect things to deteriorate often consider themselves happier now than they will be, and are sometimes pleasantly surprised at how problems work out, but they always wander around with clouds of doom over their heads hiding the sunshine of existence.

The real trick to happiness for me has been _ well, not moderation, but perspective.  It’s pretty asinine to claim you should try to be moderately happy, as it would  be to seek to attain moderate health, or moderate love, or moderate experience.  You want to be as happy as you can be, but not to the extent of damaging other areas of your life _ for a given happiness, like all our desires, is dependent on who we are and what we are thinking at the moment, and is always in conflict with other desires and happiness we should be aware of:  spending money  now, for example, instead of saving it for something we want.

Happiness is balance, but not moderation, not a middle path but a choreography that can be magnificent.  From my own prejudiced judgment and  perspective, living as happily as possible is one of the grandest achievements of any conscious being, and should be considered, most of the time, above all else.  Not least important, finding some kind of happiness somehow is almost always possible for most of us in most situations.

My paths to happiness have varied over time.  Generally, however, I have found that taking the time to exist in the moment, to float in the entirety of who I am, and meditating have been useful.  A deep breath when rushed,  a forced minute or so to consider a sunset or a flower, a lazy acceptance of just feeling tired and content, or even just a forced smile while things are going badly can make my day more enjoyable, which is a dandy start for the rest of my life.

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Happy thoughts, happy world, happy little trees.

Happy life, happy times, happy you and me

Giggle, giggle, laugh and smile,

Be joyous all the time

While others struggle, make you toil,

Earn money, chain your mind.

What goals suffice a human life?

Monuments or plans?

Great wealth, achievement, family?

Well _ take them if you can.

But each sad moment has a price

It’s gone forevermore

If we’re not happy as we live

Eternity’s a chore.

Happy people, happy world, happy earth and seas

Happy life, happy times, happy you and me.

 

 

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What makes you happy?  You can probably name a whole bunch of things without much thinking:  freedom, free time, wealth, health, achievement, and an ongoing infinite list.  Each of them, no doubt, would seem even better if you had more of them.  But if you take that list and really contemplate it, obvious human issues intrude.

For one thing, most of those concepts probably overlap or contradict one another.  Wealth will give you more freedom and free time, perhaps, unless it is achieved with constant work and struggle in which case you have almost no time at all, and your choices are restricted by what you must do.  There are always tradeoffs, like that between wanting to eat to satiety and yet wanting to remain trim.  As you are constantly reminded, “no pain, no gain.”

Another issue of course is that each desire tends to be asymptotic _ that is,  as you get more, each increment is less satisfying.  If you are thirsty, the first sip of water is happiness distilled, but each glass thereafter provides less and less happiness, until you are frankly sick of water and the idea of another drink makes you extremely unhappy.  This underscores yet another problem, which is that all happiness tends to be momentary, recurring and cyclical.  You go to bed stuffed and wake up hungry.

It is wise, but probably impossible, to rationally sort the things that make you happy now or the things that might make you happy in the future and balance them and work logically to achieve what you think you want.  The future is never what you think.  Your deep desires are rarely easily discovered nor pursued.  And a giant fly in the ointment is that you change as you grow older, the world changes every moment, and what made you happy yesterday won’t work today or will be impossible to find tomorrow.

Some say that simply struggling with all these contradictions is what really makes you happy.  Finding a challenge and meeting it will give you satisfaction.  That is certainly fine advice, but it can also ring hollow when after much sacrifice you lose the race and the cheering stops _ and in some very real ways you are born and designed to lose any race except living each moment fully.

The answer is: there is no answer.  You exist with intuition and emotion and imagination as well as with pure rationality and logic and language.   No human has ever become happy by doing nothing but contemplating happiness.  Life is one giant unity, you grab it and run with it, but you need to run with the joy of running as well as for the anticipated joy of what it may provide in the future.

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Cybernetics promises us that there will inevitably be people poured into almost immortal form, kept alive with electronic circuits and billions of transistors mimicking the brain, enhanced unimaginably by extended senses and incorruptible memories.  I think that is all about as likely as any of the other bygone dreams of human immortality, but even in reaching to do so, I think there should be some consideration given to human sanity.  This goes even more for the quest for Artificial Intelligence, which is not even trying to create a human being as such, but some rational agent with logical purpose and drives _ an alien that we should greatly fear.

Human sanity is a strange and infinite unity.  It is certainly not founded on rationality and logic, for there are totally rational and logical people who are by all social definitions insane.  Sanity includes emotions, and drives, and desires _ happiness being one of the strongest.  But it also incorporates feedback on all of those motivations, and a kind of automatic pushback which increases pressure as extremes are reached, making the experience less consuming as it is achieved.  This is a complex mechanism, not really understood by us, even though we depend on it for survival.

Furthermore, human sanity balances contradictions simultaneously as it acts.  A good deed is also in some ways a bad deed.  Happiness inevitably contains elements of unhappiness _ and so strongly that in the blink of an eye our mood can change so that we are suddenly confronted by happiness merely containing seeds of happiness.  For that matter, something entirely irrelevant can intrude from the outside world or our inner being and turn whatever is making us happy or unhappy sideways into some new perspective altogether _ if it is not put aside entirely.  But not forgotten _ always available and a short shimmer away should our attention wander that way again.

That is sanity.  That is hard.  It is not simply logically following instructions.  It is not simply filling out patterns.  It far more than mere response to stimuli.  We cannot really define it, if we truly examine ourselves and others.  We have no means in equations or words to map its fullness, nor approach its utility.  And _ given those handicaps  _ it is impossible that we can grant human sanity to machines or cybernetic enhancements.  Should the core human be lost, the result will not be sane, although it may be powerful indeed.

A human is emotion, existence, memory, complexity, miraculous being.  All of that somehow balanced over the long eons into being able to survive and interact with others, to form social groups, to survive and more than survive.  And to want to survive, to enjoy being happy, to be glad when others are also happy.  Until cyberneticists consider that and figure out ways to implement it in the machines they so mechanistically compose, there is a danger to the rest of us that their results will be exactly what they expect _ and exactly what we should fear most.

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In 2025, the Quantum Happifier app was invented by Arnold Guacamoli.  It was a relatively simple extension of the standard personal cellphone implant, which located and directed a pinpoint induction current into an area of the brain that made someone feel wonderful.  The “quantum” was frankly a marketing ploy, making it sound more sophisticated, but in fact there were 10 preset degrees of happiness rather than a smooth slide of feeling better and better.  Prudently, and on the advice of lawyers, the original model would only provide a moderate buzz even on the high settings.

Naturally, in a troubled world where everyone had an implant, this was a fantastic success and in a small way contributed to social stability.  Soon, however, medical applications became apparent as doctors and hospitals realized that a souped-up version could provide better pain relief than drugs, and that terminally ill patients could quite literally (and inexpensively) die happy.  Furthermore, the cost of ongoing care in all settings was reduced, as complaints fell to zero.  Of course this was fought tooth and nail by the entrenched drug, hospital,  and hospice interests, resulting in a patchwork of laws that solved nothing but did provide much employment for the legal profession.

Media pundits crusaded for and against the device, religions took to the streets  _ after all, faiths founded on the sufferings endured in this world appeared pretty irrelevant.  Meanwhile the masses just went about moderately dazed and stupefied, as they always had, but with a permanent grin.  Money rolled in for Guacamoli, who nevertheless had women problems and just couldn’t seem to get his own life together.

Two developments were to have grave consequences.  Hackers discovered how to easily override the presets and get into the “medical range” of happiness.  Now anyone could be as completely happy as they wanted, which of course meant they needed nothing else, including food, shelter, or life itself.  And unscrupulous governments _ an oxymoron _ decided that by extending the benefits of full happiness to the poorest they could eliminate those most unhappy citizens who were a constant drain on state coffers.  Coupled with the vast problems engulfing the real world,  these caused the population to plummet in a matter of months to unheard of levels. 

Soon, few were left except the fanatics and born misanthropes who had rejected happiness from the beginning.  The way was thus opened for … but that’s another story.  And poor Guacamoli, haunted by what he had done and depressed at who he was, on June 13 2028, set his own happifier on the highest level possible and exited this vale of tears.
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The great truth is that we can only be happy this very instant, and while focused on the very thing we are focused on.  If we shift attention, we may immediately become unhappy from seeing the world in another way.  If we wait to be happy tomorrow, there is no guarantee happiness will come.  If look for happiness in our past, all we have is the strange and vaporous comfort of memories.  Happiness occurs in our always mysterious now.

Whether or not happiness is necessary for survival is questionable _ certainly extremely unhappy people have managed to live long and overcome impossible odds.  Whether it is important to cosmic life and purpose is always unknowable.  Whether it is worth trading  socially recognized success for internal happiness is a constant tension.  None of these questions can be answered definitively.

Yet happiness always does seem good.  We would rather be happy than unhappy.  In one way or another, our triumphs and daily works are somehow involved in letting us generally become happier.  That we cannot completely understand why this should be so is only a reflection on how little we know _ how little we can know and apply _ of our infinite complexity.  We can study cause, and pattern, and brain maps, and emotional chemicals, but happiness like other human characteristics will forever remain an internal and personal reaction.

So at least let us wish each other a happy day, happy times, and a grand hope for a happy future.

Low Tide

High tide gets all the glory, all the stories, all the press clippings.  Extremely high tides are destructive and dangerous and irresistible.  Extremely photogenic, and susceptible to manipulation of tales about hubris and inevitability and the follies of man.  Those who think at all of tides, usually think of them high and roaring higher.

Low tides can be more deeply fascinating, not least because there is no element of danger involved, and almost no direct impact on the works of civilization.  The mudflats or the sandy beaches or the marshes are exposed, revealing a temporary,  alien world, where even the life we glimpse on its glistening floor seems to be waiting for things to return to normal, while it hides from what will take advantage of the loss of concealment.

Clams hide under the mud, throwing up occasional squirts, and would be desperately hoping (if they could hope) that the bipeds with rakes along the shore do not find them.  The hermit crabs scurry about mysteriously.  Barnacles close up tight, safe from everything except a too ferocious sun.  Bits of exotic seaweed,  green algae coating rocks,  dogfish eggs dry in the breeze.  All sorts of interactions take place out of sight.

And the flats themselves tell a story not unlike that of the fossil record.  There are strange tracks and stranger artifacts.  The hollows dug by horseshoe crabs, mysterious trails of worms and birds, empty shells for seagulls to investigate, always trying to find unfortunates which were stranded by the receding waters.  Skeletons of fish, and of course the various flotsam and jetsam of nature and humankind _ wood, seeds, leaves, plastic, rusting anchors, old hulks, bottles.

And it will all go away in a few hours, and come back again, a more frequent cycle than the days, repeating and repeating for as long as there has been and will be a moon.  It whispers that whatever we build will be undone by the rising water, and the next tide is for whatever comes next, but it will not be us, and will never be exactly the same.
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I did not grow up next to the seashore, although I was privileged to spend a month each summer at my grandparent’s house on the Jersey shore.  That spit of a sand bar at Lavallette encompassed all the mysteries of the tides _ on the ocean side it would be full high tide, while a few blocks away on the other side of the strip Barnegat Bay would be near (not exactly at) low tide.  What was revealed at low tide varied tremendously between the two, and the way the tides came in at each spot totally difference.

It was possible to find out many odd things about the bay during low tide, such as the best spot to catch crabs (or avoid them if we were swimming.)  Fishing at the bay dock was pretty useless when the water was low; as was surf casting when the ocean was out.  Sand crabs, shells, and jellyfish were abundant on the wide sandy ocean beaches, but the bay was just mud flats, eelgrass, and a generally scary hidden bottom in which almost anything might be lurking.

After I moved to Long Island, I was near the tides again but pretty much ignored them for years.  The ebb and flow of rush hour traffic, the rhythms of a working day, the cycles of corporate accounting, our kids’ school characters were much more important than whether the harbor was full or empty, and where the moon might be.  Now I have the time to understand and appreciate everything and its interconnections.

So now I watch each day as the tide is far out, or high, and worry about super high tides, and marvel at the exposure of the flats and the docks and their pilings so far up when the sea recedes.  I see the follies of man revealed in old wrecks, and the continuing cycle of nature in whelk, clam, and oyster shells.  It is a comfort that so much is the same, a frustration that so few ever notice, a sadness that it could all end soon _ for me personally, of course, but also for civilization itself and everyone else if people continue their destructive ecological paths.

-

The water’s out, the beach is wide,

Kids play, build castles on the shore
Splash into waves of muted roar
The world seems perfect, sun sublime,
Wondrous moments out of time
No work, no worries on our mind
Forgetting that in a few hours
Our marks will all be cleaned and scoured
With ocean cover as before
Relentless cycles of the tide.

-

Statistically,  I can safely state that you are not a harbor pilot nor tidal fisherman, and thus have little or no need to understand the complexities of the tides in a particular locale.  And they are complex, having to do with the phases of the moon, delays caused by inlets , relation of the moon to the sun,  the local winds, and the weather farther out in the ocean.  But you don’t need any of that to turn on the lights and drink a cup of coffee. 

This is just another example of “wild” nature that you can tune out at will, along with the rain and cold, along with the smog or sound of crickets.  You have undoubtedly constructed a set of comfortable cocoons for yourself,  physically soft and safe.  In these various comfort rooms you enjoy an electronic ambiance of music or news or social connections _  that screen out what our ancestors had to endure as reality.  And, most of the time, this works well for you.

It’s debatable whether this is a healthy situation for sane humans.  When you dump all of your natural, evolved characteristics you may be losing more than you suspect.  And it is not enough to try to recover them by watching nature programs in high definition or once a year engaging in a year-long adventure.  If you are smart, you have discovered that already.  It may not require tides to accomplish, but reconnecting with the physical world will probably make you a happier and more effective person.

-

Fossil evidence would seem to indicate humans evolved far from ocean shores, spending eons emerging from jungle to savannah before their final mad dash to conquer every available niche on the planet.  Surprisingly, although people still like to be surrounded with memories of jungle and savannah (trees and lawns), those who can afford to seem to want to live by water, preferably the dramatic and ever changing sea.  Prehistoric communities on all the continents (and ocean islands) happily lived on shells and fish and  other marine bounty.

That says something about our adaptability, and how little we are controlled by supposed genetic predisposition.  After all, people’s instinctual roots should not favor cities, yet most of the world’s population is urban.  The fact that we can ignore what we “should” be makes any future predictions hazardous.  It is likely that we could adapt just as easily to underground or spaceship or sea-floor living as to anything else.  And although people in those situations would miss something, such deprivations have seemingly had little effect in any environment up until now.

With the lack of evolutionary connection to tidal influence, most of the legends of our cycles being tied to the moon are pretty unlikely.  We do not procreate, nor eat, nor meditate, nor act in any way affected by the moon, other than perhaps using the light it provided for an occasional night attack in the days before electricity.  Romantic connections of love or anything else to the moon are pretty much fantasies, as most of us have learned to our chagrin.  A full moon is beautiful _ but so is just about anything natural.

Still, oceans and tides have been important to civilization, and still play a role.  They were necessary for exploration, discovery, and exploitation of resources; they continue to provide information on life at the edges and must be considered when construction buildings seaside, or when guiding large cargo ships through ports.  Those are the large and obvious effects.

But only now are we beginning to understand the vast importance of the oceans as the lungs of the planet, as reservoirs of carbon dioxide, as moderators of climate, and as vital elements in the food and oxygen chain that underlie our existence.  And their health is in danger, which is revealed by any casual study of tidal waters, where the pollution is worse, the ecology is thinned, and garbage litters the littoral.  The waters are murky with runoff, and oily from motors.  Pristine shorelines are vanished even in remote polar areas,  huge garbage matts swirl in a strange Sargasso in the Pacific.  We are right to be alarmed. 

The oceans are so gigantic that it seemed we could never damage them.  We were wrong.  Now the problems seem so immense that it seems hopeless to try to solve them.  Hopefully, that is wrong also.  It is a certainty that in the long run we must fix the problem of the oceans or perish.  The only open question is exactly how much time we have to effect that “long” run.
-

The old man sits on a concrete wall on a bright cool April morning, watching the ebbed tide flow back into the harbor, carrying seaweed and junk inward as brown froth forms along the edge of the water.  Sea floor remains glistening and exposed, shells and dead horseshoe crabs, old rusty anchors and chains, rope, waterlogged wood, bright green algae and barnacles on the rocks.  The usual gulls traverse the shore, picking hopefully at whelks and clams _ the overwintering ducks are gone, the resident swans and whatever are engaged in mating rituals, the summer visitors like the terns not yet arrived.  Boats are beginning to fill the basin again.  A solitary treasure hunter roams the wet sand with a metal detector, clammers seeking pocket change are hauling their sacks onto pickup trucks, the rich are noisily having their waterside estates encrusted with additional tokens of wealth.

He remembers _ not long ago, a mere few decades _ when there was much more grassland in the tides, when working boats went out with traps for the plentiful lobster, when a weekly giant barge would deliver oil to tanks at head of harbor on the site of the old power station.  His wife, who grew up here, has told him of pristine eelgrass meadows and dolphins rollicking in sparkling clean water, only a few rowboats or barely powered outboards sharing space with the baymen.  But that was a half century gone _ nature cannot compete anymore.   Even in the last year, the grass dies back more, the old trees are felled in increasingly violent storms, the seawall itself is threatened by continually higher tides and surges.  Of course, that is hardly his concern, as this moment is.

He can dream _ of a few hundred years ago, clean water, seals and wildlife too teeming to count, natives in harmony with all that existed, even with the undoubtedly dense clouds of mites and mosquitoes now reduced to fractions of their original strength.  He can visualize all this beneath a vast ice sheet, with no wildlife at all.  He can imagine futures where storms have swept the hills clean of anything higher than grass and scrub, where humans are long gone in some catastrophe or other, where rising sea level has placed his current vantage point deep beneath the waves.  Whatever will be, will be, implacably and unknowably from his standpoint.

And, finally, like age itself, the old man accepts all that is, that was, that might be.  Enjoys the moment and the casual beauty of everything interrelated, for this moment is what he has, and he is grateful for it.  No matter what, it has been wonderful to be alive, to be human, to have existed.  No matter what, it is still miraculous to experience this exact time as completely as possible, ignoring all that is out of sight, out of sound, out of conscious thought.  He wishes others would understand _ but at least he has come to his own benediction.

-

Low tide is Cinderella, dirty, smelly, ignored.  An inconvenience for harbor pilots, a boring expanse of greenish rocks for painters and tourists, a stretch of slime for those trying to swim, a poor time to catch most fish.  It comes around all the time, mysteriously and inconveniently and never quite on a schedule we understand.  Nobody gasps at the power of nature during an extremely low ebb, as we do at the heights attained by its opposite.

Part of that is because we are mostly so disconnected.  Most of us do not gather seaweed for a living, no dig for clams for sustenance.  We do not gather mussels and other shellfish in the exposed shallows, nor trap eels and small fish in tidal pools.  We don’t try  to locate bloodworms for bait.  The denizens scurrying around are basically harmless and beneath our notice.  We buy our farmed seafood at stores and markets, the rest passes us by, there are more important things to do in our busy lives.

But low tide is part of everything natural, and we should embrace it as we do any other part of nature, seek not only to understand its role but also its proper beauty, and the consistency it imparts to the whole of the environment.  It is an excellent lesson in the humility we should all seek when approaching the wonders of this planet and this existence, and gaining a foothold in understanding how to properly preserve the paradise which we (still) inhabit.

Acting My Age

I was lately in the doctor’s office, surrounded by a bunch of old people with nothing else much to do.  I have hardly ever needed a doctor over the last thirty years, except for the annual checkup.  I have blood pressure and statin prescriptions largely because of family history, so they make me come in twice a year now to be sure things are still ok, although I’ve taken them for years and check my weight and blood pressure at home every week.  Anyway, I was sitting and listening to my MP3 player, and watching the ancients passing the time when I had one of those dreadful realizations:  I fit right in!

At sixty six I don’t really feel all that old, and I treat retirement as some grand lottery I have won.  That is, I’m happy with life, take my time enjoying it, do what I want when I want.  I spent most of my life pouring energy into a not always awful career and pouring money into a usually worthwhile family.  I never seemed to have much time for myself.  Until lately.  Once I reconciled that I am simply what I am, and will never be what I thought I might be at various times past, everything has gone very well.

Anyone who tells you sixty is the new thirty is not sixty or is lying.  I don’t have the energy that I had even a decade ago, and I do things slowly, and I get a little confused, and I can hardly recover from excesses that I once hardly noticed.  You can stay in shape and look good but only if you treat such discipline as a full-time chore, which is not what I planned for retirement.  The trick is to enjoy being where I am, all the time, and to accept limits while rejoicing in freedoms.

The result is that I’m quite happy.  I walk, exercise, eat, think, read, write, converse, and take the time to enjoy everything I encounter.  I tend to think of myself as finally being in the aristocracy I always thought I should have been born into.  When I get bored, I pity the poor peasants who are still working.

Mostly, I never leave anything significant on the table as time passes.  Any day might be my last _ if not the last of life, then the last of clear thought, or mobility, or decent hearing and eyesight.   Each morning is new and miraculous, each day should be filled, and each night left cleansed of other possibilities.  Mostly, life should be a continuous stream of nothing to regret.
-

Some people have absolute pitch, some an infallible sense of taste, some see a person once and recognize them for the rest of their lives, some can never be lost.  I have always had a kind of accurately set internal chronometer that set my current age against the expectations of my life.  This has mostly been a happy thing.  When I was young, I knew I was young and gloried in it, when I was middle aged I accepted the many joys available there, now that I am old there are different, but interesting, options available. 

All of my days had certain limitations, but also certain possibilities.  The fortunate part of knowing your age is you can take full advantage of it.  I usually did so, and my main regret throughout life is that I could not remain stuck wherever I was forever.  I took to calling these good times in my life “bubbles” because I knew they would burst, but they were miraculous while they lasted.  And time can run fairly slowly, so by being aware such times can seem to stretch on almost forever.  I never ended up wishing I was younger, or older.

Of course I do not claim I never miss nor desire to be something else.  To be young again _ ah that sometimes sounds great.  But sometimes _ well, I have a good memory and unfortunately I can always recall the times of horror and desperation as easily as I can remember the grand ecstatic moments.  For that matter, I would always prefer to have been rich, or tall, or have certain personality traits I do not _ but wishes only carry you so far, and the worst thing about wishes is they can hide the glories available in the moment you actually inhabit.

So I try to act my age.  More than that, I try to fully be my age.  I don’t want to pretend I am younger than I am, I don’t want to too quickly embrace being older than I am, I want to follow the logic of my internal clock and see what the world offers at exactly this hour.  It has worked well so far.

-

Lewis Carroll’s Father William cannot be improved upon….

 
"YOU are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,

And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,

"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose

That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"

Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"
-

-

One of the saddest and most frustrating traps you can run into is to spend your time hating your true age, wishing to be older or younger than you are.  You will then spend many of your actual precious moments unable to experience the full benefits of your existence, while futilely trying to turn the clock ahead or behind.

It’s an envious culture, and part of this comes from that envy.  Young people often wish they were older _ to get a driving license, to move up the corporate ladder _ while mostly what they really seek is the perceived advantages such age would bring them _ which is often an illusion.  Older people often seek to be younger _ and spend countless minutes and coin on nostrums, exercises, and concepts like the mystics of old _ eating jade and gold to become immortal.  They are also doomed to frustration and failure, and miss what glories might come from being wiser and less ambitious than impetuous youth.

You really should take a deep breath once in while and appreciate exactly where you are in the calendar of your years. Of course, nobody knows how long any given calendar may be _ but you can assume it is more or less normal until events prove otherwise.  It is fun to be even an adolescent as long as you respect being one, it is possible to revel in the pain and struggle of middle age because it is a temporary thing with its own rich layers of achievement, it is even fun to be old as long as you are not completely destitute and alone _ at least one of which you can try to repair right up until the day you die.

Naturally, you have control of your life _ well, you have influence on your life _ no matter what your age, and you should exercise that well and wisely to improve your situation and to expand your experience of miraculous existence.  But some things that are easy at one age are almost impossible at another, and to fight the impossible is usually just another frustration.  So try to act your age, be your age, and respect your age.  You owe that to yourself.
-

Sorting life by decades is a useful convention, although all lives are subject to time and situation and vary infinitely.  Somehow, the years do roughly sort themselves into certain time periods, and although the edges are badly defined and trends overlap considerably, it is often possible to look back (or around) and say, “in these years, I was generally doing this and thinking that.”  These actual memories are often far more important than the grand goals we set ourselves looking far into the imagined future.

So, at least in this culture, it is “normal” to be a child until the age of ten, with no responsibilities and lots of new learning and adventures.  From ten to twenty it is all about becoming responsibly independent and taking on the traits of adulthood, unfortunately including grown-up vices.  A young adult from twenty to thirty is desperately seeking a place in the world, a career, a family or group, a location, an inner conviction, any fulcrum on which to rest inner worth and outside recognition and money _ yet at the same time, enjoying the absolutely gorgeous moments of being young and free and physically prime.  From thirty to forty, everything seems to mature with both solidity and desperation, both excitement at becoming important and a growing feeling of being trapped.  By forty to fifty, the first intimation of becoming older cannot be missed, life is a constant rush of pressure and expectations, there is no time and little energy and everything seems to drive forward with an implacable and irresistible logic of its own.  From fifty to sixty, the pressure lets up a bit, but the sense of loss increases, and it is impossible not to dream (or try to do) what one might have done on a different track in life, leading to frequent reevaluation and mid-life crisis.  By sixty to seventy, it is all about adjusting to becoming tired, irrelevant, and phased out in all ways _ sometimes happily, sometimes not _ with the compensation that most of the guilt for anything can be dropped since nothing can be done about it.  And then there are the later decades, of which the less said the better, but with their own particular harmony of fitness.

Some say this is depressing.  You should be able to start over at sixty as if you were thirty, this is a new age, power and drive are no longer limited by old biologic constraints.  Maybe that is true, maybe it will become more true.  But won’t something be lost?  Reviewing age honestly, is it not good that there are stages we can all experience, each different and varied, like the movements of a grand symphony.  Who wants to forever be a child, or to constantly meditate with the elders, or to rush trapped in schedule while middle-aged?  Let your age speak to you, not as a dictator but as a coach, and life will be deeper and more filled with joyful meaning.

-

Death Rides The LIRR

Janet plopped down on the 9:04 to the city one morning, trying to shake a vague sense of ennui resulting from too many days doing too much the same thing.  A grey fog covered the spring trees, a few folks filtered into car on the off-peak run, mostly quiet, but the background noises were always there.  Suddenly there was a profound hush, an almost physical sense of absolute quiet.

A black-hooded figure with a scythe sat down next to her.  “They let you bring something like that on the train, these days?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

“Oh, it’s traditional, and of course nothing yet detects me completely.  I just decided to visit for a while.  Like you, nothing much to do,  same old same old.”

“Uh, well I thought I was in good health… should I get off  … is there about to be some terrible accident … is this a warning or a notification … I mean…”

“So many questions!  Relax, just a courtesy call.  As far as I know.  They never tell me anything anymore, the corporation is really falling apart.  I’m, thinking of going free-lance consultant in a few years.”

It took a moment to digest this rather startling information.  “I thought you had appointments and all that stuff,” she ventured.

“Ah, yes, meeting people in Damascus.  Once upon a time maybe, if someone went off a cliff at high speed I could confidently wait at the bottom.  If their heart stopped,  I was first on the scene.  Now _ well what with air bags and seat belts, who knows?  And I could kill whoever invented defibrillators.  There I am, out of breath, ready for action, and … ‘oh, never mind.’  Drives me crazy.  I tell you, the folks running this whole thing have lost control and vision.  And don’t even talk to me about quality.”

“What about quality?” Janet couldn’t help herself.

“It can’t be maintained with quantity.  They got into a race to the bottom, lowest cost, most souls.  Seven billion people, no time for one here one there: it’s all mass catastrophe, mass murder, mass slaughter, mass plague.  They don’t need me for cleanup, they just bring in the four accountants of the apocalypse with their gigantic trucks and janitor crews.”

“But you were one of the four, weren’t you?”

“Forced retirement, dear.  ‘Losing my touch, served honorably, time for new blood.’  I have a stupid gold watch, somewhere,” he fumbled in his robe and a skeletal hand brought out a Philippe Patek.  “Lot of need I have for a watch,” he muttered.

“So what do you do now,” she asked.

“What everybody else in my position does, I guess,” he growled.  “I take the train to the city when I’m bored, catch up on what the four assholes are doing with the world by watching CNN, go on trips and see what I can of the tourist sights, catch up on my reading.  Not much of a family, you know, never really had the time.”  He glanced at the watch.  “Ah, look at that, I have to get off here …” Mineola, the stop was Mineola.  “Possible business with somebody important, might just die of a heart attack, if I’m lucky.  Can’t count on it, though.  Anyway, nice talking to you.  See you sometime…” he waved vaguely and got off, the sounds of the normal commute rushed back in.

“Don’t hurry,” she whispered fervently, as the person sitting next to her glanced at the interruption and then went on looking at his cellphone.
-

Internally most of us never believe in our external age.  The young feel old and mature, the mature think they are young and flexible.  An old person often feels he has woken up into a nightmare where someone has switched bodies and minds while he was sleeping.  Alas, it is all true.  We can fight it, we can ignore it, we can hope it goes away _ but the clock relentlessly ticks on.

I most pity those who are desperately trying to now accomplish what they should have done at a more appropriate year.  Those middle aged folks who denied them selves an adolescence or who worked drearily through what might have been times of adventure.  Nearing them in those I feel sorry for are those who refuse to give up dreams that were only appropriate when they were different people _ like aging athletes who do not realize their abilities have decayed and their glory season is past.  Life is constant adjustment, and those who do not make adjustments are doomed to constant unhappiness.

So, I mostly try to act my age, although I have as many moments of fantasy as anyone else.  The joy comes in discovering exactly what acting my age might imply, and embracing fully those parts I think seem the most fun.