A DUPONT’S EX, SIR PAUL McCARTNEY, JOEL OSTEEN’S CONTRADICTIONS, A BACKROAD TO GOD, A DREAM COME TRUE…& THE ANSWER TO LIFE.
Life changing introductions, inductions, and a couple of quasi seductions
CHANGED FOREVER - I was new to New York and got myself invited to a party thrown by elegant Francis (with an “I”) Carpenter--the onetime DuPont-wed Francis Carpenter’s magnificent home in Bridgehampton.
I stood to the side of a elegant room nursing a Dewars and Soda -- I had been coached that that was a smart drink, plus a twist – with insecure, sweaty palms. A distinguished, middle-aged man walked up to me and asked, “Who are you?” I mumbled an answer. He said, “Spell that for me.” And I did “F – R - A – G – A - L - E. He jumped right in with this, “Fragale? That’s not Fragale, it’s Fra-GAUL-a. That’s Italian. We love Italians in New York City. We named an airport after one.”
Liz Smith, at the time, a widely syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News, came up to me and filled me in. “Jimmy, that was author Arthur Laurents. He wrote the books (rapidly) for West Side Story, Turning Point, The Way We Were, Hallelujah, Baby, and Home of the Brave.” (Gulp). “You should feel honored he took the time…”. After that, this small-town boy from Clarksburg, West Virginia, was somewhat changed forever.
PAUL McCARTNEY - Four minutes and one second of greatness…not to mention 90+ years. Is there’s no end to his talent? Another boldfaced credit. Suddenly, Sir Paul McCartney’s a respected photographer. But that’s not what I love most about him.
Over the years, I’ve gone on and on, about my many favorite songs on A) SUBSTACK to B) “Huffington Post” to C) The Writer’s Digest—invariably including my most loved, Ray Noble’s “The Very Thought of You.” The point here…
Some years back, McCartney was on “The Larry King Show” (remember him?). When asked what his favorite song was, the legendary Beatle answered, “The Very Thoughts of You.” Lo, behold, hold the phone, and sound trumpets -- mine also -- and eventually Paul McCartney recorded “The Very Thought of You” with Tony Bennett (a 4:01 minute cut) on Bennett’s 2006 Studio Album “DUETS.” The release was timed to coincide with Bennett's 80th birthday. And that lp went on to win a Grammy Award.
The songs selected for DUETS-ONE were many Bennett had already played a major part in introducing into the Great American Songbook. But Bennett’s approach was different…Unlike some other celebrity-duet-performances recorded separately and then afterward -- engineers-producers combined the performers --for one, Mr. Frank Sinatra's 1993 Duets,) Oh, no. Tony Bennett was right there IN the studio with each of his partners crooning as musicians strummed in front of them.
Ergo, there you go, and so, the album debuted at Number Three on “Billboard’s 200” in its first seven days out there--selling 202,000-plus copies and then spending five consecutive weeks in The Top 10. Ultimately, it was certifiedGOLD. (Gold is when a song or record sells 500,000 units.) NOTE: Why, in Canada, Bennett’s first DUETS album instantly captured the Number One spot on the charts.
And last, the Most Loved credit of all: Hard to fathom…how can it be that “The Very Thought of You," now one of the most favored popular standards -- music and lyrics by Ray Nobel originally recorded with Nobel and his Orchestra in 1934 -- is now 90 years old. Wow-wee.
DREAMS DO COMES TRUE – A Young, Aspiring Writer’s Dream Comes True. When I was starting out and aggressive, I had a proposal for a feature film. I contacted Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles. Surprise! They liked the idea. So, they flew me out to Hollywood, put me up at the SUNSET MARQUIS HOTEL AND VILLA, 1200 Alta Loma Road, Los Angeles, California, 90069 -- and left a car in the Hotel’s underground parking for me. The greatest thing about the location, it was a couple of blocks from Jim Morris’ Gym, at that time, the hippest in the area.
To feel like a player, I figured up a total of what I was to reap from all this -- and sent the acting-agent-ten-per-center Gloria Safier a check. I don’t know if I owed her anything, but I felt like a real professional. Somehow, Safier didn’t argue with the gesture.
It was all what you might imagine. Lunch two or three times in the glamourous--and it was!--Paramount Pictures commissary with a Young Woman and Even Younger Male Studio Executive assigned to me. While munching the steak tartar du jour and craning my head to see who was there, I pitched my idea over and over again.
On the lot, I saw the lead from CHEERS’ Ted Danson (several times), Rhea Perlman, and Tony Danza there doing ‘Who’s the Boss?—we chatted, Tony and I and still do; executive, Barry Diller, and a “nice-guy, public-relations-type who was subsequently fired for referring to a black secretary as a “bitch.” (He shared that with me himself.)
Now, as for the movie/film idea itself--it was from an existing nonfiction work I did not have the rights to. At the time, it was all so premature it didn’t seem to matter. And we speculated that possibly the account in the book might have been public domain any anyway.
The story was riveting and still holds up to this day.
THE PROJECT I SUBMITTED TO PARAMOUNT PICTURES:
I saw it as a court room drama in stunning flashbacks. A NON-FICTION RELEASE: THE UNLAWFUL CONCERT: AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRESIDIO MUTINY CASE, BY FRED GARDNER.
The Presidio is a park and former U.S. Army post on the northern tip of the Peninsula in San Francisco—a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
a) 1961–1973: The Presidio filled a supporting role during the Vietnam War—serving as a stockade-prison. Regularly, anti-war demonstrations took place at the Presidio's front gates.
b) 1968: Soldier Richard Bunch was shot, initiating the Presidio mutiny at the Presidio stockade prison.
So, The Unlawful Concert was an account of events that took place at the Presidio Army post in the late 1960s. DRUM ROLL.
The war in Vietnam was escalating. Twenty-seven men/soldiers were being held in the overcrowded stockade and the guys staged a sit-down…presenting a petition of grievances after witnessing that fellow prisoners killed by a guard.
These angry imprisoned AWOLS-deserters considered their nonviolent rebellion a justifiable attempt to attract attention to deplorable stockage conditions… Ah ha! Subsequently, to squelch the caught-off-guard GIs dissent, their superior officers charged the soldiers with mutiny. It took the fellows by surprise. (The first men to be court-martialed were to be given 15-year sentences.).
My take on Fred Garner’s account of the Presidio incidents: a courtroom drama. To show and tell the narrative in fiery flashbacks during a lively, noisy, raucous courtroom trial.
An impressive, articulate black lawyer represented the men. Near the end, in the courtroom, this distinguished black gentleman-lawyer steps up, in a shocking scene, and said these jaw-dropping words: the men had been, (his word): “Niger-ized.”
Fascinating flashbacks would keep interrupting the already send-up of a trial in a courtroom:
Vietnam War (1961-1975), Courts-martial and courts of inquiry -- United States, Trials (Mutiny) -- United States, Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Protest movements -- United States, Anti-war demonstrations -- California -- San Francisco, Anti-war demonstrations, Courts-martial and courts of inquiry, Protest movements, Trials (Mutiny), California -- San Francisco, United States…
THE END.
After ten days or so, I flew back home to New York and real life, resuming my job as a doorman/bouncer at a club on Amsterdam Avenue.
UPSHOT: a few months later, Paramount Pictures contacted me to inform me that they were dropping the idea. KA-Boom.
Soon after, I was clued in by some cynical insider-friends (?) “PP has hundreds of those projects.”
Shrug.
It’s a wonder I didn’t die from discouragement. I polished my resume, went out and got myself a real job.
THE ANSWER TO LIFE – My first novel was titled THE ANSWER TO LIFE. Throughout my childhood, I had secretly been looking for the truths--attempting to making some sense of it all. Though it was uncool for a young Italian Catholic boy from a small town in the hills of West Virginia to share—tell no one!--that he was surreptitiously looking for weighty answers on the q. t. beyond family, friends, and church. I hunted for them anyway.
Forward, after five years of college, and several geographics, by God’s grace and a major miracle, I landed in New York City. Through several career changes and miscellaneous jobs, I learned I was a writer. Oh, I had been writing, but I didn’t feel confident enough to call myself a writer. During a searching therapy session, a psychiatrist, in his German accent, said to me, “Mr. FRA-gale, you are a writer.”
After that, I did what I had to do to exist and subsist in New York City… and continued to make notes about my life. What ended up in the April 2014 on Amazon.com was a book… a compilation/compendium/thoughts-and-experiences from childhood to present day New York City. So, then my novel and my secret longing to hit on the answer to life was out there in the open for God, the angels, and a small universe of New Yorkers to see, ingest and point out errors. The novel did sell and still sells a copy or two even got a couple of good review.
BRIEF DETOUR: Inevitably, folks ask me, What IS the Answer to Life, Jim? I share this: Most of us have/has a long list of rewards we want from life, and I suspect they’re all fairly similar. SOME OF THEM: good health, healthy children, happy kids, to be disease free, satisfying and rewarding work, money in the bank, love, fine friends and neighbors, an acceptable spiritual/religious life, a good night’s sleep, their horse to win, their stock to go up, and the taxman off their back—enough to most people…
I’ve invariably wanted something more…something else, something different, some elusive by-product, some extra thing—and I found it was called satisfaction. It’s a tiny intangible, unmeasurable quality called… this satisfaction…from my work, my relationships, from friends, from my life. If all that isn’t clear--and I struggle with it all the time—another way to come at it is the word fulfillment. BACK TO SUBJECT:
Unfortunately, some not-so-well-meaning person back in the hills, told my younger brother (secondhand talk!) the novel’s contents. On the spot, my sibling stopped speaking to me. (“It’s a novel!”) Most folks know Italians are notorious for embracing, holding, and nurturing grudges. There’s a dialect-term kicked around when you silently “stew” about situations: boffa. Hmmm. And I wonder if grudges cause hemorrhoids.
Flash forward decades: Much more important to me now, my second novel, F.U.! (FOLLOW UP! is outselling all seven of my amazon.com books and outnumbering my readers on SUBSTACK. Why? F.U.! contains 50 of my mother Louise’s original Calabrian recipes. I suspect she’s smiling down on me as we speak. While we’re on her, my mother thought I could do anything…everything.
And that’s what I’d like to address at this juncture, that maternal confidence sustains us unfailingly throughout my life. I’ve read where many psychologists agree with that concept in much more articulate detail/language. I DO trust I’ve returned the favor somehow. Thank you, Mama Mia. I’d been wanting to explore that concept but didn’t have the expertise or knowhow.
You might consider this next section a giant leap. It is not.
All my life I’ve felt my mother’s belief in me; what she expected of me; how she behaved toward me bolstered me all my life. For sure, it’s love. Yet, it is far beyond affection, though surely is part of it. In truth, frankly, there were parts of her nature that were cold.
When I wrote the original draft of my first novel, I snagged a high-profile New York agent, Gloria Safier, who I think is now part of a heavenly choir shining down on me every day. Not the point. Gloria did not place the manuscript with a publisher.
During that time, while waiting and obsessing, I had this conversation with mother: Mom’s advice to me, “James, go on Johnny Carson and then they’ll buy your novel.” My answer to her, a question, “Go on Johnny Carson? What would I do!?” She simply offered, “Play the piano.” The truth, “I’m a lousy, downright terrible piano player.” Immediately she waved that away with lowered voice, “They won’t know.”
Meanwhile, I carried the manuscript around for decades. Ultimately, via much weeping and gnashing of the teeth, in 2014 the book was available on amazon as a novel, The Answer to Life—a novel filled with morsels life from early childhood to current New York City blackouts.
Which brings me to … recently, I stumbled on an essay by Reverend-Doctor Bob Sawvelle of Tucson, Arizona’s “Passion Church.” In his article, Dr. Sawvelle used exact words I’d never heard out loud that were plucked from the back and the front of my mind – sentiments I’d ever verbalized. An example:
“A mother’s love and encouragement help shape our worldview…mothers impart faith that guides and strengthens us…The influence of a mother cannot be overstated.” Then Sawvelle’s shared touching details about his mother (and in the process mine): “She believed in me always. Her confidence in me helped me overcome challenges and setbacks later in life.” It was as if Bob Sawvelle was whispering in my ear and, like a pop song lyric speculates, “…he must have tapped my telephone line.” I had to consider that possibly this was a universal concept, common knowledge to most and… something I missed the lesson that day.
The Good Pastor keeps trucking, “The special bond between a mother and child creates trust and influence… Faith develops through love; the nurturing bond of a mother lays a foundation for trust.” Notice that this is, in my opinion, a feeling way beyond love. Dr. Sawvelle echoes another of my thoughts, “My mother always encouraged me, always believed in me and gave me confidence to know I could do anything…” --thoughts I had had many times and never shared.
Then the Reverend-Doctor looks back, “Perhaps it was being raised on a farm in the Midwest; she [mother] demonstrated a resolve to press ahead despite hard work, setback, and loss. Her ability to press through…persevere in hardship help build a determination in me that helps me to this day.”
As for me, I was the oldest child of six, all about one year apart. We were evicted from a basement apartment when I was 11 or 12. At that moment, I knew I had to fess for myself… from then on, it was newspaper routes, scrapping for newspapers and scrap iron; a shoe store clerk; rounding up and returning hangers to the cleaners –- valued 2 cents each back then. It added up. (Don’t feel bad; it made me strong. I became a fighter. As one friend put it, “It gave you spirit.”)
And mother? She plowed ahead, facing every obstacle life hurled--24/7. She took over the accounting, made lists for every household chore, put out feelers for a new house. Eventually that home came from cousins on her side of the family.
Merely being part of all that…sharing--the family my mother held together by sheer will and unfailing instincts, she instilled a “spirit” in all six of us that has sustained us through life. Coincidentally, when I ruminated about that with a therapist, he said, emphatically, “Mr. FRA-gale, somebody had to take over.” And she had.
It’s universal. More examples of the universal sentiment from the Sawvelle essay: In Acts 16:1-2, Apostle Paul introduces Timothy, later a disciple, whose Jewish mother (Eunice) and Jewish grandmother (Lois) instilled the value of consistent study of “God’s Word” to him. “You then, my son, be strong in the grace … the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” 2 Tim. 2:1-2 NIV.
Methodist Church founder John Wesley, said of his mother Susanna’s biblical instruction, “I learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians in England.” His mother taught him -- and her other nine (9!) children -- what Reverend Sawvelle repeated, “God’s Word.” Mrs. John (Susanna) Wesley, in charge of her husband’s Samuel’s (Methodist) ministry, determined family worship was far more beneficial, far superior to private devotions. Dr. Sawvelle remined us, “In our 21st century culture, we are easily distracted through instant access to video, social media, and information—adult and children alike. “Faith needs love to function properly—love fuels faith!”
And “Faith working through love overcomes fear and timidity. ‘Godly mothers’ help infuse a faith that loves, serves, and is bold when needed…fuels fiery faith…” and let us here repeat again, that belief instills a confidence that’s beyond explanation to most of us.
Verklempt.
I find it a fortuitous accident (?) that I ran across Bob Sawvelle’s essay which obviously spoke to me. I suspect you and I would be more comfortable with corroborating evidence from a lay psychologist or bone fide psychiatrist than that of the clergy. I’ve not found one and will keep looking.
CONTRIDICTIONS. WHO AM IT TO QUESTION. Who am I to contradict, world-famous, beloved Television evangelist Joel Osteen. But… On page 55 of his bestseller Empty Out the Negative, he writes, “…Keep being good to people who are not good to you, keep a smile, and keep a song of praise. That’s not just being positive; that’s an attitude of faith, that’s what allows God to show out in your life.” Okay.
CONTRADICTION NUMBER ONE:
The Footstool Parable Paraphrased. In a lengthy lecture, Osteen references Psalm 110:1, “God said that He would make the enemies of Christ His footstool. God uses ‘footstools’ to remind us to stay at rest. When we face difficulties, things we don't see coming, things we don't understand, the first thing we should do is put our feet up. We need to come back to that place of peace; do it by faith…” So far, so good. Relatable, put your feed up.
The Devil Made Me Do it. Osteen says that's the enemy is trying to deceive you into standing up. He knows that when you're seated in peace and trusting God, all the forces of darkness cannot stop you. What may have been meant for your harm becomes your footstool. (Here it comes….) Instead of being a stumbling block, it's going to be a steppingstone to take you to the next level… The Lord has defeated every enemy and made them a footstool that you can rest my feet upon. You declare that you are going to stay seated in His grace and live from this place of peace and rest… because…"It's under your feet." How we see our difficulties very often will determine whether or not we get out of it. When we face challenges it's easy to get overwhelmed…” Soooo….
1 Corinthians 15 reads God has put all things under our feet… but you / we / I must live in victory… see every sickness, every obstacle, every temptation as being under your feet…The depression that's been in your family for years, it's not going to get passed to the next generation. It's under your feet. That struggle, lack, barely keep you from being blessed. It's under your feet. It's just a matter of time before you break through to a new level. God is saying, "Every enemy, every sickness, every obstacle, it's not going to defeat you. It's going to promote you." Instead, analogy, God is going to use it as a steppingstone to take you higher.
Only one more, I promise, David faced all kinds of enemies, and he said in Psalm 59, "I will look down in triumph on all of my enemies’” not "SOME" of my enemies, "ALL" of my enemies. What am I going to do? Look down, why? Because “they're under my feet…”. David says, by faith, you need to look down.
And here is that Footstool Analogy (Parable?) I love.) "If you want to say something to the enemy, write it on the bottom of your shoe because he's under your feet."
Your enemy “may have a big bark; it may seem tough and big like you can't defeat it. No, the truth is, it's no match for you. For you to look that enemy in the eye, you need to look down under your feet.”
In one of MY previous rants, I suggest an actual FOOTSTOOL where we might slip a 3 x 5 card with an enemy’s (enemies) name on it, under the footstool. (Pssst, we can offer the footstool on amazon.com for a reasonable price.)
Contradiction NUMBER Two from Osteen:
On page 33 of Pastor Osteen’s “Blessed in the Darkness--How All Things Are Working for Your Good,” he actually uses the word contradiction. I call this one “Nobody gets off the hook.”
Osteen writes, “…what you can’t see is that secret frustration, that one thing the parishioner can’t understand, but… Life is full of seeming contradictions like this that try to keep us in the darkness.”
Osteen’s Examples: 1) “You’re helping other people get well, but you [yourself] don’t feel well.” 2) Your coworkers keep getting promoted, and though you’re working just as hard, producing just as much, nobody notices you.
“All of us have secret frustrations—things that we know God could change. We know He could open the door… He could remove the temptation…but it’s not happening. It’s easy to get stuck with the ‘why’ questions. But don’t get stuck with ‘why.’ Don’t let the contradictions of life cause you to get sour and give up on your dreams.”
Apostle Paul, who wrote half the books of the New Testament, talked about his own ‘secret frustration.’ Paul endured what he called “a thorn in the flesh” but was never specific. Scholars have debated whether it was a physical condition…an illness, an emotional issue, the persecution he often endured, enemies who were constantly coming against him. For whatever that thorn was; whatever bothered him, Paul prayed three times for God to remove it; and, at one-point--implored God to take it away. His Higher Power never removed Apostle Paul’s thorn.
Osteen said, “You are well able to enjoy your life in spite of these secret frustration. The key: Don’t focus on the frustration. If it’s supposed to be removed, He’ll remove it. If not, dig your heels in and fight the good fight of faith. You have the grace you need for every situation.”
In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul finally came to terms with God, “My grace is sufficient for you. My power shows up greatest in weakness.”
And so it is. Next?
TICKY-TACK
Snippet Number One: party-pooper Florida rejected more than 500 vanity automobile license plate requests in 2023:
ERECT 10
FATHOSE
BGWANT
BICKDK
SEX DOC
WET YET (sans question mark)
SUK ME
LOV SEX.
Those license plates Florida shunned in 2022:
01D FART
APESH1T
BIGWAP
CRMSKLE
FAAART
FUPA
GO2ASHT
HO3SMAD
RATSAZZ
SL0WMF
TH0TWGN
XXX69
Snippet Number Two: It had to be 1953 when the FCC approved the standards / the parameters for color broadcasting, because…. The first national color television broadcast was on January 1, 1954 --The Tournament of Roses Parade.
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO “UNCERTAINTY.” IT’S SUBLIME, SUBTLE, but MIGHT BE USEFUL
Fast and a flash forward, today I’m amazed how often newly minted self-help books include “Uncertainty” in their commentary as if they invented it …just dreamed it up. Know that I’m more and more realizing how necessary and powerful Uncertainty is.
During the burgeoning, bustling, emerging Human Potential Movement, one often heard this concept, “Uncertainty is a high space.” I was young, unexposed, and not well informed. Hence, I was never exactly sure what that meant. INSERT: For good measure, here’s a wise realist view, “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is,” said mathematician John Allen Paulos. “Knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
DOUBLE PARKED – ALONG THE SAME LINES, SORT OF
First, a look at the recently published nonfiction by award-winning author-journalist Maggie Jackson, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, Hardcover, Prometheus Press.
Reality: Maggie Jackson is 60 years old. She was ages one through twenty during the 1960s and 1970s Human Potential Movement when Uncertainty was considered “a high space” – or were we merely “high?”
Jackson’s take, in an era of ongoing unpredictability, the swift, sure answer seems perfect and pat. We race to address scary precarity (uncertainty) and/or complex conundrums with neat algorithms, bold bullet points, and typo-riddled tweets—she calls "uncertainty-in-action?”
QUESTIONS: Who has the luxury of dilly-dallying in the neverland of being unsure? How can we find the clarity, vision, and wisdom so necessary today by hanging out with not-knowing? Maggie Jackson’s third book, Uncertain, concerns itself what she thinks is an overlooked, “unsung,” triumph of doing just that.
Queer queries. What is a good daydream? Why is being unsure now seen as a healthy form of stress? Why do A.I.'s top cheerleaders see uncertainty as the key to keeping humanity safe from its very own galloping A.I.?
Maggie Jackson seems to think by lassoing unwieldy uncertainty, we can recapture reams of improved thinking that have (or is it has?) been sidelined in these times of push-button thinking. We can discover all that the human mind -- at the peak of its powers in the most difficult predicaments -– can do. Jackson also finds this is not weakness. She champions it, it’s a new wisdom, a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day.
WRAP/RAP/CAP TO JACKSON’S TAKE: One wonders what the Honchos from the 1960s and 1970s Human Potential Movement would think about all that -- Werner Erhard, Abraham Maslow, Esalen Institute’s founders Michael Murphy and Dick Price, and Peter Marin -- about Maggie Jackson’s take on uncertainty. I suspect she’s lucky most of them are no longer around to speak out. You don’t have to agree with me or with Maggie Jackson. This is superior anyway:
AN EVEN BIGGER LEAP - TERRA FIRMA
And now, a look back at a 2021 gem, a brilliant release I’ve gone on and on to anyone who will listen, 4000 Weeks – Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The premise: If you live to 80, you have 4000 weeks on this earth. It is wort to hang in here to see what he does with that.
“The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.” One should “pay attention more to every moment, however mundane.” Yes, “Focus on a few things that matter to you, in themselves, right now in this moment.” Plus, “…pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today.” Okay, we’ve got the gist of Time Management. Now here’s what truly interests me in 4000 Weeks. Author Burkeman speaks to me “…because you can’t dictate, or even accurately predict, so much of what happens with the finite portion of time you do get, you’ll never feel that you’re securely in charge of events, immune from suffering, primed and ready for whatever comes down the pike.” Darn.
“The attempt to attain security by justifying your existence, it turns out, will always feel uncertain and out of your control.” So, so, so, it's “…unnecessary all along… Futile because life will always feel uncertain and out of your control.” What’s a mother to do?
…“AND unnecessary because, in consequence, there’s no point in waiting to live until you’ve achieved validation from someone or something else. Pease of mind, and an exhilarating sense of freedom, comes not from achieving the validation but from yielding to the reality that it wouldn’t bring security if you got it.” (To me, that’s a big slap in the face from the concept of Uncertainty if I ever heard one. Hold that thought.)
Burkeman brings in Arnold Bennett… “things should go [be accomplished] into proper working order.” That approach reminds this writer of The Twelve Steps’ suggestion to: “Do the next right thing.” Have I made too big a leap? I don’t think so. The author then quotes mighty Carl Jung who wrote, to quietly do the next and most necessary thing……put one foot in front of the other. Great minds in sync… and now, back to the business at hand…
“It’s liberating… even more liberating to reflect that everyone else is in the same boat, whether they’re aware of it or not.” That doesn’t help much, Mr. Burkeman, but good to know.
The last section of 4000 Weeks titled “Afterword: Beyond Hope,” is all about uncertainty without saying so. Oliver Burkeman goes on to quote Derrick Jensen, “Hope is supposed to be ‘our beacon in the dark,’ but in reality, it’s a curse.”
I’d heard it so many, many times during the 1970s Human Potential movement: “Hope is a low space.” Boy, did that confuse me back then, but isn’t that a suggestion that we might remain in the concept called uncertainty? “Giving up hope,” Burkman says, “is to re-inhabit the power that you actually have.” In the 1970s, HOPE: LOW SPACE.
Similar sentiment from Shinzen Young: “…pay more attention to every moment however mundane…to find novelty not by doing radically different things but by plunging more deeply into the life you already a have.”
Finally, Burkeman said, “When you’re open enough to confront how things really are, you’re open to enough to let all the good things in more fully, too, on their own terms, instead of trying to use them to bolster your need to know that everything will turn out fine.”
Sigh.
A DEEP THINKER WHO STOPPED ME IN MY TRACKS
Alec Wilkinson, author of “A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age,”-- a guest essayist for the New York Times Opinion page. His essay stopped me cold. I further investigated… and now, here are thoughts from the article and from his uncanny book.
Wilkinson wrote that he was surprised in his 70s, to be thinking about God… and that he arrived there “by means of mathematics, specifically simple mathematics — algebra, geometry and calculus, the kind of mathematics that adolescents do.”
Several years ago, he decided he needed to know something of mathematics, a subject that had roughed him up cruelly as a boy. Lucky for us that he did. He speculated that his acquaintance with mathematics was “slight” and referred to himself as “a mathematical tourist.” Here’s where he stopped me on the treadmill “…my experience has led me to believe that mathematics is rife with intimations of a divine presence.” (No caps?)
I began to suspect Alec Wilkinson was being modest. He claimed his work wasn’t an observation of his own. “Mathematicians have been finding suggestions of divinity in mathematics at least since Pythagoras, in the sixth century B.C. For many mathematicians, there is no question that God is somehow involved.” Sir Isaac Newton, “who believed that mathematics exemplified thoughts in the mind of God… simple mysteries, available to anyone, help explain why this might be so.’”
“The first is the question of whether mathematics is created or discovered. Some mathematicians believe that mathematics is a system invented by human beings and that it is shaped as it is by the tendencies of human beings toward types of thinking,” he says that that “is a minority view.”
“The majority,” he explains, “believe that mathematics exists as if independently of human thought… the discoveries that mathematicians make are a mapping of an independent and timeless territory, a sort of parallel world where nothing is good or evil, but everything is true.
“Theologians in antiquity thought ‘infinity was a property of God. Being finite, humans were believed to be incapable of conceiving of infinity on their own. God gave us the ability, they thought, as a means of understanding his nature. Theologians were even a little touchy about his sole possession of it. In 1859’s Leaders of the Reformation, published in London, John Tulloch quotes Martin Luther, sounding piqued in a dispute at a conference in 1529, saying: ‘I will have nothing to do with your mathematics! God is above mathematics!’
Though Mr. Wilkinson began to get weighty, a little too heavy for my experience, and I pray not yours, I hung in, hoping to learn something. He writes, “mathematician Georg Cantor, creator of ‘set theory,’ discovered “that infinity is not a static description. Some infinities, he said, are larger than others. For each infinity there is a larger one, an infinity to which something has been added. There are in fact a multitude of infinities, and infinities themselves can be added to one another…Eventually, one arrives at the infinity that contains all other infinities…the Absolute, incomprehensible to the human understanding. This is the ‘Actus Purissimus,’ which by many is called God.”
I usually know when I’m treading water, but since I responded to Alec Wilkinson’s work in a profound way, I stayed with it -- knowing I was learning something in every paragraph.
He shared, as a child, when he was in the woods, Wilkinson had a sense of there being an accompanying presence, of there being, that is, something immaterial behind everything. He later felt that this feeling was sufficiently common; that it had a name: immanence. “I never talked about it with anyone… Immanence is a second cousin once removed to pantheism… the notion that God is in everything, and closer to the Greeks than to Christian monotheism…”
Eminently relatable: in Sunday school, Wilkinson was taught that God inhabited a book and the form of a singular man. It isn’t so much that he resisted these premises…they just “didn’t stir anything within him.” Hence, a sense of mystery returned to him by mathematics. Ah-ha!
Wilkinson wrote: “I am pleased to have been given, from an unexpected source, a reason both humbling and human to feel that there is more to life than I might believe there to be. And even if created by men and women, mathematics, as I read somewhere, is the longest continuous human thought, a circumstance that is itself worth regarding with awe.”
I felt somewhat changed by reading Alec Wilkinson’s work and recommend a far superior introduction than this one. May I humbly once more suggest his book.
Alec Wilkinson’s A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age,” was recently released in paperback, Publisher: Picador Paper and contributed to The New Yorker more than forty years.
I love this Jim! So many golden nuggets-- from you sharing the same favorite song with Paul McCartney to Paramount flying you out to LA for your pitch, to you chatting then and now with Tony Danza, to your novel and everything in between-- such an entertaining and amusing read! And one of my favorite things about all of your pieces is your voice comes shining through! Keep up the awesome writing, Jim!