Stray Shot

I’m home alone, Linda having gone to a conference of some sort.  I should recall what it’s about, other than just something to do with insurers and the insured in construction industries.  Sometimes she’s the only woman at one of these things, which she handles easily, having grown up the only girl among four brothers.  On the other hand her mother was the matriarch of the family, and between her southern lands and the patriarch just north, there was an international zone check post, where Interzone police checked the  papers of all traffic in and out.

I on the other hand was between two sisters, one four years older and one eight years younger.   I was protector of one and needed protection from the other.  It’s an interesting pattern, and like any other pattern, varying in presentation by the quality of the script and of the acting.  The patterns are the most obvious things in the world, because they are the archetypes, what everything else is built over.  But they are hard to see like water is hard for a fish to see.

For the friends who are at this time holding memorials for Brugh Joy, the gifts are beginning to come in.   Each one of us had a special relationship with him, and when I think of that, I recall his talking about his mother’s funeral.  Each of the children got up and gave a little talk at her memorial service, oldest to youngest.  Brugh was one of the youngest if not the youngest.  And as he listened he was wondering, “Who are they talking about?  That’s not my mother.”  And having the exceptional mind he had, Brugh grasped that none of them really knew the mother, and that none of us can ever really know our own mother.

I have been watching my mother get increasingly frail.  On Saturday morning she was taken to the hospital because she could not get out of bed.  The doctors could not admit her to the hospital because there was no diagnosis allowed by the insurance carrier which they could make, and she had already been in a wheelchair.  So she was taken back home where my older sister has come to look after her.

And of course I know that there is a pattern between my sister and her mother, and I know what it is, but I won’t say.  It’s none of my business.  Brugh got to a place where he realized he couldn’t just tell people what their patterns are, and watch the light lift them out of darkness.  We have to see it ourselves when it’s okay with us to look at it.

When I felt in the mood to write this evening, I was thinking of something Jung wrote and was wanting to find it again.  I could not get the quote fashioned in my head.  It was something to the effect that everything is balance, and he described the balance of structure and nonsense as the sweet spot.  I had already discovered that.

The Christmas before last, Derrick and Kierra bought me a coffee cup with a quote from Dr. Seuss on it:  ”I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.”   They realized that about half of what I say is nonsense.  I think they are relieved to know that I know how much nonsense I speak.  It could be a worry if I did not.  Sometimes I make nonsense out of sense, and sometimes the other way around.

Of course it’s hard to find a quote when you don’t know approximately where it is, so I soon found myself scanning other things and thinking, “Yes, I agree with that.  Not Just because you’re Jung, but because  I’m convinced it really is all about balance and counter balance.”

Brugh  is a part of the Conscious Circle of Humanity. I miss having him around, even if we didn’t quite know what to do with each other sometimes.   He was a teacher, and some of his heirs have already been reminding everyone that anything he said is their intellectual property.  Maybe Rex Ranch will be like Graceland and there will be platinum records on the wall:   “Brugh’s Greatest Hits.”  Two thespians will act out the dispute between brothers at high noon.

That’s both logic and nonsense, or an oscillation between them.

When I opened the Red Book to begin looking for the quote playing around with my brain, I also paid attention to the page to which I actually turned, and to where  my attention first focused.  I read this:

“Believe me, it is no teaching or instruction that I give you.  On what basis should I presume to teach you?  I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way.  My path is not your path, therefore I cannot teach you.  The way is within us, but not in gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws …  We betide those who live by way of examples.  Life is not with them.  If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself?”

I do not think of Brugh as an example, and I never did.  He was a particular and very individual man.  Sometimes I disagreed with him and it burned me that he simply acknowledged my not being able yet to bear to see it.   And yet it is the way with people that in what infuriated you about a man, also most humanized him and made him lovable.

His ability as a seer was astonishing.  I read that Jean-Martin Charcot was a seer.  He created the  field of neurology from where it was when he began his work:  ”crazy or not crazy.”  He would  have somebody brought into his office at Salpetriere, in Paris,  and left there while he worked.  After awhile he would have the one taken away and another  brought in.  He just observed the patients in this way.

At some point one of these patients would be standing there as usual and he would go, “I see.”  And he would see.  He would know the pattern behind the behavior.  All the cues coming from the person would be put together beneath the surface, and when the picture was complete, it would come to consciousness.  ”I see.”

Brugh had that gift.  Those of us who joined his seminars knew that he was seeing each of us, which was the good news and the bad news.  He could see us better than we could see ourselves.  By submitting ourselves to this process, we had a way to provide for ourselves an external, objective observer.

So I guess my Seer is coming back home.  He says, “You got no secrets,” and I say, “I do from people who mind their own business,” and he says, “I see.”  Because he knows I can’t argue with that.  All I can do is follow along the path between logic and nonsense, whistling past the graveyard.

The second visit to Hong Kong beats the first in spades, because instead of taking the tours and navigating the downtown financial district on foot, we went the other direction, into Soho and some of the back streets and alleys.  Of course once we got out of the downtown high rises the separation of the pedestrians from the street traffic was gone, and it was much easier to explore.

We started out together but after standing outside a store for a half hour I decided to go off on my own and meet Linda back at the hotel.  I explored some of the art galleries — commercial ones — to see what is hot in this market.   I’ve already seen some of the contemporary Vietnamese painters, and wish I had the bucks to collect some of it.  But not really.  You don’t have to own it to enjoy it.

I stopped into a Starbucks for some tea and a rest, and bought a girlie magazine in a 7-11 as a gift for a friend who, when I asked what he wants from Asia, said something with long silky hair and big brown eyes.  I wrote back that I had found him, and he said I’m a wise ass.  So I found him at least pictures of what he dreams of.

I’ve realized that everywhere I go I mention how beautiful the people are, and I’ve concluded that the older I get the more  beautiful people are everywhere, with the possible exception of Philadelphia.  One reason I’m feeling so good is that it’s cool in Hong Kong, like San Francisco weather, and it’s the weather I like best.

Last night we welcomed the New Year at the club on the top floor of the Conrad, for which we’d make reservations at the end of January.  When we had to leave Singapore early yesterday morning to get back for it, we thought we made a mistake.  But we were wrong,  What a feast it was.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that many different kinds of food so well prepared, and all available for my greedy consumption.  Wines were good as well, and of course there was the entertainment …

We dined between seven and eight, when the fireworks began on Hong Kong Bay, spread below our window table.  They were spectacular while they were visible.  After awhile the smoke from them began to drift upward and toward the island, and gradually there was a mixture of dark smoke in which the lights continued to flash and the fiery explosions blossom.

Tonight is our last night in Hong Kong, and the last night of the Asia trip.  Too bad; I’m just getting accustomed to Hong Kong.  I celebrated the end of the trip in Soho with New Zealand Pinot Noir, prosciutto pizza, and a cute Chinese waitress.  I finally figured out my true calling in life.  I was supposed to be an ex-pat.  But most likely I was evil in a past life.  Come to think of it, I’ve been something of an asshole in this one.  Karma’s a bitch.

We’re at the airport … way too early, having followed instructions from Jet Star for passengers with an extra bag to check.  It turns out this is merely punishment, a way to make people really sorry they are over the imposed limit.  I have been trying to alternate blogs:  one dealing with the outer reality and the next dealing with what is going on behind the curtain, in the dreaming.  Today I am just connecting the the last one I wrote, about Singapore, to expand on first impressions.

My first impression was based on walked through some expensive shopping areas, and predictably, it was a very flawed sample.  The designer goods and ridiculously expensive jewelry is to objectify the person, and objectified people behave according to rules of etiquette, which serve to keep anybody from moving up a class. There’s no point in being superior if you behave like a glad hander, so when the air is thick with that particular flavoring people are less likely to break into spontaneous song and dance.

Once I got away from the place where bank executives buy their luggage, things changed considerably.  My first impression of the people in Singapore as not obsequious was right; but they are friendly, open, and maybe the most democratic people on the face of the earth.  They just don’t need your money.  They have their own.  As the cab driver told me, begging or hustling money in Singapore is not allowed, and even though there are some poor people, nobody is desperate.  Everybody is provided food and shelter.

The people are very attractive, the population being composed of Chinese, Malaysians, Indians, Eurasians, and mixes thereof.  And my impression of order was correct, but maybe I assumed it had to be enforced order.  It is order secured by excellent planning for the future, and a public transportation system which keeps the traffic down.  On the bus I took around the city, there was a host who asked where I wanted to get off and informed me when I was at my stop.  Even people who stopped the bus mistakenly were treated with great courtesy and given information.

Singapore has a variety of religions, but there is very little tolerance for intolerance.  There was an article in the Sunday paper relating that a Christian evangelical minister had made some disparaging remarks about other religions and the entire community was upset.  He was apologizing, and there was a reminder that what makes Singapore such a wonderful place to live is that nobody judges anyone else.  People here, the paper reported, pay no negative attention to the habits, dress, or inclinations of others, and most don’t intend to change it.   Intolerance is divisive and stirs up trouble where there was none before.

Okay, I’m going to qualify the “very attractive” summation of the people here.  Some of them are drop dead gorgeous; and they are an advertisement for the benefits of democracy and elimination of gross poverty.  Singapore is so safe you can walk in the park at three in the morning without concern for your safety.  There was an article in the Sunday paper which gave me an idea of how little crime there is here.  The story, given a lot of space and with a photo, was about a man who came back to a public garage to get his car and found it on blocks, the wheels stolen.  This was so unusual as to cause a furor in the city, and grave concern.

Imagine a three column story in the New York Times about somebody’s wheels being stolen.  You can’t even get the police to take an interest in such a crime, not even if you know who did it and provide a name and address.   So my impression that so much order and absence of crime was accompanied by repression of some sort appears to be mistaken.  It seems people live this way because they like to have a clean, well ordered, prosperous and democratic society.  What a concept.  They don’t even pack heat in case somebody cuts them off in traffic.

And so we leave Singapore wishing we had planned a longer stay here.  On the other hand we can get here directly next time.  It’s worth renting a place and staying for awhile.

Singapore.  What a welcome sight after Saigon and Bangkok, packed with cars and endless hordes of people reaching for the cash.  By contrast this city spreads out in languid beauty, prosperous and sophisticated, with the traffic spare and flowing smoothly, at least as viewed from the top floor of the Conrad.  Of course it is Saturday … but even so the contrast with the other Asian cities is striking.  The cruise ended this morning, with many of us celebrating the last couple of days with a dose of food poisoning of some description.  I think this is traditional on cruises, and because it is only about as popular (with me at least) as black tie dining, is limited to about 48 hours.  It was thoughtfully wrapped up by debarkation time and I had tea and toast before our turning in the passenger I.D.s and walking the gangplank into Singapore.

Our first contact was with the porter who shepherded us from the ship to a taxi.  At one point, when we were standing in line to have the bags put through security, he looked back at another porter, put his fingers to his mouth, and formed a huge smile.  I looked back to see who was the receiver of this message and he was glum indeed, paying no attention to the suggestion.  At Linda’s insistence I shamelessly overtipped him.   After the last two days with the naked and the dying, she’s giddy around healthy young dudes.  Actually I didn’t realize how well I tipped until arriving at the hotel in a taxi and realizing it was less than eight dollars for the fare.  Because Linda has collected so many credit card points, she is in the Hilton Diamond Club, so we checked into the Conrad, and were given a room on the top floor.  I move between some cultural extremes; I recently wrote about slumming at the Best Motel in Mohave, where I hid the cash before walking to the liquor store.  Here there’s free drinks at the Executive Club.  I like all of it … ; )

There are some really cool touches in the suite.  For example, you insert the card key in a slot inside the door to turn on the lights.  This means that when you leave you know where your key is, and, the lights go off shortly after you leave!  What a great idea.  There is a panel  beside the bed with control buttons; for example, one you push for privacy and another you push for service, so it eliminates the need to put a sign on the door.  Another great idea.  One need never get out of bed but for the changing of the sheets.

As long as i was overtipping I overtipped the porter who brought up the bags, as I had no small bills left.  The problem with doing that is you have a hard time stopping.  I’m thinking of getting a cigar to chew on and maybe a white linen sport coat and a big handkerchief with which to obsessively wipe the perspiration off my brow.  “Tha’ah you ah son; take the missus out and get her dampened.”

I’m going to walk around awhile and will continue later, when I have taken a look around the neighborhood, which is mostly a very expensive shopping area for the guests at the major hotels.

Ohhhhkayyyy …. I’m back … and my shirt is wet.  This is a jungle city, and the reason there’s not many people on the streets is that, like Hong Kong, the pedestrian traffic moves largely above the streets so that both people and cars — natural enemies — are separated as much as practical.  The walkways flow into shopping malls where, if your watch isn’t working, you can pick up another one for, say, fifty thousand dollars.  Not that you can’t get a ridiculously expensive Rolex in the states, but the sidewalk doesn’t move past it very often.  You don’t want a bunch of winos puking on your treasures.

I saw one watch so tricked out it looked like a clock on a strap.  Who buys this crap?  Not somebody concerned with what time it is.   Maybe somebody trying to get beat up?  I just  wear my Timex and a t-shirt that reads:  “My other watch is a Rolex.”  I knew a guy who wore a real Rolex.  Parked at a McDonald’s in a Rolls Royce.  He had a pistol in his ribs before he could say “Super size me.”  When you go slumming you ought to dress down.

The thing you notice about the people here is that while they are friendly, they are not obsequious.  The British were here and they left behind their signature export — other than unbridled materialism — a polite  reserve.  In Britain the mark of good breeding is to display no gestures which might suggest an emotional response radiating from the belly outward. One contains chaotic  impulses with the patterned brain.  A proper Englishman doesn’t  wave his hands and jump up and down on encountering an old friend, for example.  The corners of his mouth might turn up but if the eyes wrinkle,  it is decorously.  “Hello old fruit.  Shame about your wife.”

“One  copes old sod.  She did cross against the light.”  A slight movement at the corner of the mouth.

“Rather slow.”  A twitch under the left eye, and the hilarity has passed.

Maybe they are just cautious, here, because, in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, the cops don’t need you and man, they expect the same.  That’s what I’ve heard about Singapore, at least.  Don’t spit on the sidewalk because it’s illegal.  Don’t drop your cigarette butt on the sidewalk or piss on the wall or threaten somebody.  In general you want to contain yourself, the way the other people here contain themselves.  In exchange you get a spotless city with polite, efficient services and cab drivers who correct you if you try to pay too much.  I did overpay when we had to slip in the nearest air conditioned place to escape having a heat stroke, but that  was in O’Leary’s Bar, an American franchise.

We sat in O’Leary’s and studied some tours, deciding what we might want to see during the two days we have here.  Linda, being Linda, is reading reviews on the internet before committing.  She has downloaded some apps, such as a map of the city, and is fortified with a Singapore Sling, while I had something that won’t make me go blind:  a mimosa.

One copes.  A slight movement at the edge of the right eye, then in a bizarre and visually unpleasant episode  the right ear folds all the way forward and then flat against the skull in three full flexures.  Two policemen approach woodenly from behind a potted plant:  “Too much!  Too much!”

It’s Super Bowl Monday on the South China Sea, off the coast of Thailand.  I woke up at seven and stumbled to the Magellan Lounge, the Seabourn Pride’s theater, where the game was projected onto a huge movie screen, delivered by satellite feed live and gorgeous.  There were even hot dogs and beer along with coffee.

I have an enjoyment of the off kilter moment, but I have to say there are damned few of them aboard this ship.  Everybody I’ve talked to here says that Seabourn is the best cruise line in the world, and that the Pride is the finest ship in their fleet.  It’s hard to imagine how it could be improved.  If you want something you just ask, if you have time, because more often than not you are anticipated.  And there is at least one crew for every passenger.  We asked for the Super Bowl, and we got it on a screen right out of an old Palace Theater.

The only funny moment came shortly into the game.  We had arranged ourselves so that everybody had a full view of the screen, when a couple came in and went down to the front seats.  “Down in front!” Tevis called out.  The woman waved at him and sat down, taking a little chunk out of the bottom of the screen where the crawl runs.  I was pleased that New Orleans won.  They need all the morale boost they can get.

I slipped out to Veranda Cafe for eggs benedict and coffee during half time.  The Pride was slowly cruising toward Ko Kook Island, where a pristine beach was being prepared for our exclusive use by the crew.  By the time the tenders took us ashore the beach was set with umbrellas and seats, a bar was set up, and masseuses were waiting in grass huts to work their magic.

The beach was pure white sand and the water was warm and perfectly clear, the sand sloping gently out into the sea so that you can walk a long ways before the water comes up to your waist.   And of course the service was perfect, with pina coladas on serving trays to get things rolling.  A Thai Elvis Presley was singing the King’s songs from a makeshift stage while most of use lolled in the water, interrupted only by a skiff serving champagne and caviar out in the surf.  That drew a crowd.

On the beach there were serving tables with all kinds of food:  hamburgers, hot dogs, crab, shrimp, vegetables, thin roast sliced beef, ribs, lamb, ham, fish, and more, plus a range of desserts and three kinds of ice cream.  Crew even came around with sun screen, as well as ice water and, after the pina colada and champagne courses, a course of margaritas.  It was hard to tell whether people were sunburned or just dilated.

We are resting in the cabin, now, and later will go down to the restaurant to a dinner hosted by Rachael.  I can’t explain Rachael.  She’s just gorgeous, and she sings rock and roll and dances as well as working on the crew.  Linda said, “I accepted the invitation because I know you think she’s the hottest female on board.”

Well … yea …

We came aboard the Seabourn Pride and were immediately surrounded by an attending staff, something I’m not used to but could probably learn to like.   What’s not to like about having anything you want any time you want it?   That’s life aboard the Pride.

The Captain’s name is Bjarne Larsen.  How Swede it is.  He said that should anyone go overboard we should throw into the water a life buoy or anything else  that floats.  It would be really embarrassing to make a mistake and throw something after a drowning person that proved not buoyant.  I amused myself with cartoons of my own making, which is a lifelong habit.  Had I learned to draw I’d connect the habit to something outside myself.  As it is, the habit just makes my sense of humor seem sometimes odd.

The cruise is expensive,   though in this economy the prices have been slashed to the point that it’s affordable to those not so rich.  Our first formal dinner at the cruise director’s table confirmed that  the favored subject of conversation among the passengers … at least the ones dining with us … is  travel.   And not just travel, but  expensive travel.

We struck a conversation with a couple of older people from Scotland, and our looking out at the Hong Kong high rises reminded the man of their having lived in a high rise once, though not very high, where the wind whipped around it because of convection currents.

Trying to be engaging I mentioned that when I moved to San Francisco in 1980 the winds used to blow freezing fog up the avenues off the ocean, but that in recent years it has been much milder.  “I have to tell you,” he said, “that we don’t buy this global warming thing.”   Even talking about the weather seems to have become socially perilous.

At our first dinner, we were seated with a couple from Los Angeles.  Roy made his money in air conditioning and his wife, I think her name was Lalla, but I’m not sure I heard it correctly,  spends at least some of it on jewelry.   I think jewelry is a throwback to a time when one wore one’s wealth, and it was contained in rare trinkets.  Manhattan Island was bought from the natives with beads, so I have heard.   My mental cartoonist furnished a caricature of a woman wearing earrings made out of American Express cards.

Our dinner with the cruise director and eight other people was pleasant but lacking excitement, as,  like I said, the conversation around me at least focused on sea cruises and expensive accommodations.   I recalled a conversation with Joseph Henderson in which I expressed some feelings of inadequacy around a situation I was in with a German intellectual I was dating.  I felt like a rube around her friends and wondered if I should break it off and find something more culturally comforable.

He said that what I was having trouble with was not being as knowledgeable about European culture as are Europeans, but that this is to be expected, and  they generally don’t know all that much about American culture, either.  “When I used to be at dinner with the Darwin family I felt the same way,” he said.  He married into the family; I think it was a granddaughter.  “They knew nothing about the Dakotas,” he said “so that gave me something to talk about.”

One of the people I especially liked was an American from Florida.  At first I felt pushed by him, as he was trying to get me interested in signing some kind of letter to the head of Seaborne, urging that we get the Super Bowl  beamed aboard the ship.  I didn’t really want to do that once I realized it would be about three in the morning here when it broadcasts.  I’m trying to shift my internal clock away from being awake in the middle of the night and I don’t intend to shift it back if I succeed, even for the Super Bowl.

The reason I liked him (his name was Tevis) was that his irreverence  was in perfect juxtaposition to the English conversation about hotels and high end travel.  After talking to Linda awhile he  turned toward me and asked, “You hear about the black boy who said, ‘I don’t want a rich woman; I just want one that works steady?”  It was so off kilter with the proper behavior of the English that I had to like him for providing the ballast.

“I know that guy,” I said.

Linda is certainly a different breed than the women of inherited leisure.  “She’s a woman who understands how to run a hot plant,” I said.  Later there was some conversation about San Francisco, and from those who aren’t in San Francisco it’s almost always something about gay people.  For those who live there it almost never is, and so it comes as a surprise.  The fish don’t pay much attention to the water.

“I think there’s something queer about gay people,” Tevis said.  I didn’t laugh because I wasn’t sure that it was a laugh line.  I almost said, “And something fairly odd about the rest of us when you scratch the surface,” but censored it.  I wasn’t sure my dinner guests found themselves odd at all, and the surface was for the most part expertly  lacquered to resist scratching.   But I was sorry I hadn’t laughed because the point isn’t to let people know what you think in such a situation, but to make them feel comfortable.

“That was a joke,” he said, “but it went over like a lead balloon.”

After dinner Linda told me that Tevis is eighty-five years old, and that he was speculating on whether the woman on my left, who was very attractive, was wearing a bra.   I would have guessed him at least ten years younger.   I hope when I’m his age, I’m that energetic.