SONGS OF THE HEART: Scent of a Woman

I was scanning the shelves of my video tapes when I saw one that I had really liked, the movie Scent of a Woman, starring Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell.  I decided to watch it again, and realized that it is one of my very favorite movies.  I watched it with rapt attention with my heart filling up from the emotions coming from the screen.  And near the end of the movie, I realized that I truly loved the music, which powerfully resonated with me.  Unlike yesterday's offering, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I could not just watch the ending over and over again to satisfy my yearnings, I'd have to continue watching the whole movie over and over again and that certainly wasn't practical.  I wondered if there was a soundtrack of it, and sure enough, yes there is, so I ordered it and now can listen to the music whenever I wanted to feel those emotions again.

3.  Song Title:  Scent of a Woman:  Main Title

Composer:  Thomas Newman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfjKZBJjfDo

I hear in this song yearning and appreciation, the hopes of the young, and their ability to accept worthy mentors.  Charlie Simms, played by Chris O'Donnell (an actor that I like a lot), is a high school scholarship student from Oregon (considered to be hickish by his fellow students) attending an exclusive boy's private boarding school in New Hampshire, who hopes of getting into Harvard when he graduates.

One day, some boys do an RF on the disliked Headmaster's new Jaguar and a faculty member knew that there were two boys who saw who did it, a boy whose father was a huge donor to the school, and Charlie, who was there on scholarship.  Neither boy would rat out the perpetrators, so the Headmaster leaned solely on the more vunlerable Charlie, whose career the Headmaster held in his hands.  The Thanksgiving break was coming up, so the Headmaster said that once everybody was back, he would hold a campus-wide hearing in the auditorium during which Charlie would be tried by the school councel and if he continued to fail to cooperate, he would likely be expelled.

Most of the students were going skiing during the Thanksgiving break, but Charley was looking for a job during the breask so that he could earn money to fly back home to Oregon for Christmas.  He answered an ad that had been posted on the school's bulletin board, a position during the break for a home sitter/caretaker for a blind man.

Charlie went to the house and it was the man's sister who had placed the ad, she and her husband and two children wanted to go out of town during the break, but somebody had to take care of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade (played by Al Pachino).  She took Charlie over to a separate dwelling on the property to meet the Colonel. He was a loud, angry, irascible man and it looked like the posting would be the job from hell. He tested Charlie like, "How is your skin, son, I like my men presentable".  Charlie reasonably felt that Cononel didn't like him, and felt that he should back out, but the sister begged him, to take the job, nobody else had applied, so Charlie relented and agreed to take the job.

It ends up that the Colonel had plans of his own regarding the Thanksgiving break.  As soon as the family had packed their car and were gone, the Colonel got Charley to him pack, they were going to fly to New York!

Here they will go on an adventure that will be life changing for both of them.  I hear that sence of power and grown in the music.  I have no idea what the title means, but I am guessing that "Ginch" is a fall guy and that the doers of the deed against the Headmaster's car are willing for Charley, whom they assume lives on the wrong side of the tracks and therefor are not "one of them" would be a good one to carry the Headmaster's wrath instead of them.  The fact that Charley is operating from a stance of morals does not enter their minds.

4.  Song Title:  Scent of a Woman:  Track House Ginch

Composer:  Thomas Newman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7nHfmFdYNA

On the airplane and in New York, the Colonel wants to enjoy all the best things in life and on this jaunt, and is happy to treat Charley to an elegant hotel, the best food and drink (Charly can hardly grasp how expensive his hamburger is), tailored clothing, riding in a limousine.  And women...especially women.  the Colonel may have lost his eyesight, but he makes up for it by his nose and ears.  He can guess almost every detail of a woman just from hearing her voice and smelling her perfume or bath soap.  While he could be harsh and demanding of Charley, he becomes a pussy cat (in heat) when it comes to women.  All this is extremely appealing.

There is a very charming scene in a restaurant where there is an orchestra playing Tangos.  The Colonel determines that there is an attractive woman who is waiting for a male companion to arrive, but meanwhile, the Colonel would like him and Charley to keep her company, and she is intrigued.  Hearing the tango music, he asks the woman if she likes dancing the tango.  She says that she doesn't know how, so he offers his services...he can teach her.

The Colonel asks Charley to tell him the coordinates of the dance floor, which Charley outline for him, and then the Colonel takes the woman out on the dance floor and dance a tango to everbody's applause.

5.  Song Title:  Scent of a Woman:  Por Una Cabeza (For One Head)

Composer:  The Tango Project 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbK8Xpz0Xe4

 

During the Tango scene, Charley is coming to admire the Colonel and could see that he was really quite able despite his blindness.  However, the next day, things take a dark turn when the Colonel takes Charley to Thanksgiving dinner at the house of his brother and numerous other family members, who clearly wished that the Colonel had not come; the blood among them was very bad.  During the strained dinner, one of the relatives asked Charley if he wanted to know HOW the Colonel had been blnded.  They wanted to let Charley know that the Colonel was drunk and showing off, jugling explosives or someting and had foolishly caused his blindless himself.  This was meant to show to Charley that if he had any shred of admiration for the Colonel, he shouldn't have, since it was the Colonel himself to have caused his own career destroying malady, which they seem to see as fitting justice for his other bad characeristics.

But I say that if a person's foolishness or mistake is what caused their own handicap, doesn't that make the emtions for them even worse?  They have nobody to blame but themselves, but all that does is to increase your own burden of grief.

Finally they got out of there and the Colonel had one more pleasure on his agenda, this time the most important one at all.  He had asked his limosine driver (who would know) to set him up with the finest woman in New York offering favors.

The Colonel put on his best clothes and the limosine driver took the them to woman's street, parked, and the Colonel went into the apartment.  Both the driver and Charley sat there quietly and relaxed, waiting while the Colonel was having sex with the finest woman in New York.  The atmosphere seemed sacred.

6.  Song Title:  Scent of a Woman:  Tour of Pleasures

Composer:  Thomas Newman     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI38laIfnQE

 

When it was over, the Colonel came down like he was floating on a cloud.  He settled back in the seat and said, "What a beautiful woman."  Then the driver started the car and they drove down the streets of New York back to the hotel.  But the Colonel sensed something sad about Charlie and Charlie explained that as the trip to New York was close being over, he would have to face that assembly back at school.  He and the Colonel had discussed it earlier, but now that it loomed closely, it became a more urgent.  The Colonel said, "Oh Charley, why are you all alone on this?  What is your Dad doing to help you?  Charley explained that his Dad had abandoned the family when he was little, but now he had a step father and they didn't see eye to eye.  Basically, he was alone with this issue.

The next day, the mutual mood turned even darker.  The Colonel did not want to get out of bed and it became clear that now that he had experienced all his favorite pleasures he now had planned to kill himself.  This led to a read intense drama in which the young man took on the role of being the mentor for the older man.  The Colonel said that he had ruined his life and he no longer had any reason to live.  Charley said that he wasn't a failure, he was just in pain.  That he had much to live for.  They faught powerfully over the gun, which Charley finally got ahold of.

How do you make a person want to live?  The following song brings back the various themes, the Charlie theme of learning and appreciation and the hopes of youth, the great adventure of the Colonel theme enjoying and showing Charlie some of the good features of life, and the scent of a woman theme that is spread throught all of it.  Then near the end of the song, it comes like a sunrise, opening up the answer.  How do you make a peson want to live?  Love.  You love them.  And life will follow.

7.  Song Title:  Scent of a Woman:  45 to 25

Composer:  Thomas Newman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbE8Wyi1ipE

 

There is more than I wrote about, this was meant to be about the power of the music, not to reveal every aspect of the movie (you might want to watch it!).  But the pair missed the airplane flight back to New Hampshire from New York (because the Colonel had expected he would be dead), so the Colonel decided to take them both back home in the limousine all the way from New York to New Hampshire, because Charley had to be on campus in time for the hearing in the auditorium.  The Colonel established with the limosine driver that next time the two of them went to New York, they would go there via that driver and his limousine.  The driver said, "It would be an honor, and I will give you a rate!"  I love the idea of the two of them going back to New York together, taking the big car the whole way.

They got there just in time for Charley to take a shower and then go to the auditorium.  What all goes on after that will be worth watching the movie for, but if Charlie saved the life of the Colonel, the Colonel also payed back Charley in a glorious climax to the film.   After the triumps for both, there was more "scent of a woman" to entice the Colonel and it is clear that a solid mutual friendship had been generated between the mutual "mentors".

It was very sad for me when the movie came to an end.  I wanted to keep seeing the two them.  I am glad I have the music.

In the End Title, I love the touch of the military drums.  The Colonel can be genuinely proud.

8.  Song Title: Scent of a Woman:  End Title

Composer:  Thomas Newman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uSEqE7-4YM

SONGS OF THE HEART: Ending of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

2.  Song Name:  Ending of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ("I Will Wait For You")

Music Composer:  Michel Legrand

Link to the video on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ObVG9o2xWI

The much-loved French film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, is a feast for the senses.  The entire dialogue is sung (in French, with English subtitles), which some viewers might assume would be off-putting or awkward, but don't let this unique format stop you from watching this movie, that has been described as one of the most beloved romantic movies of all time.  I felt that it was easy to quickly get used to this format and accept it as beautiful and fascinating.

Also, there was a gorgeous wash of colors throughout the film, in the clothes and the interiors of the rooms, and a coordination of them both.  One might want to watch the movie more than once, just to take in all the various aspects of the production.

The main theme of the movie and the music is the concept of "I Will Wait For You", in which a young and ravashing Catherine Denueve (Genevieve) and handsome and steadfast Nino Castrenuovo (Guy) vow eternal love for each other, but circumstances in life intruded to wreck that vow.  Among those circumstances, Genevieve's mother, who had financial issues, did not approve of Guy and hoped that her daughter would marry a man with money, plus she felt that the pair was too young to be in a love affair.  Guy was drafted into the Army and had to go fight a war in Morocco.  Guy and Genevieve had sex prior to Guy's departure, and Genevieve became pregnant.  The timing of the issues and their individual situations led to Genevieve's decision to chosing to marry a rich man who wanted her and was willing to accept and adopt her baby that had come from another man.  When after the war Guy came back home to Cherbourg, there was no sign of the Genevieve.  Genevieve's mother had sold her ailing umbrella shop and Guy found out from others that Genevieve had gotten married and moved away.

Guy was devastated and felt betrayed, and fell into a deep funk.  And if that wasn't enough, his aunt who was his caretaker and had a serious illness, died right after he got back from the war.  She had been able to stay alive throughout his absence until she could see him again.  Working there the whole time as a nurse had been a kind and beautiful girl (Madeleine).  With there no longer being the aunt to take are of, Madeleine said to Guy that now she should leave.  But Guy said that he did not want her go, and Madeleine revealed that she had always love him.  His heart opened and he realized what a wonderful person she was, and he fell in love with her.

Having this relationship with Madeleine now, Guy got himslf emotionally cleaned up and took the money he had when received when he was discharged from the army and put a down payment on a gas station, something he had always wanted to have, and build a business for himself.  He married Madeleine and she bore him a son.

A couple of years later, Genevieve on a driving with her daughter decided to take a detour through Cherbourg, where she hadn't been since her marriage.  She decided to get some gasoline, and stopped at the gas station that happened to be Guy's.  He goes out into the snow to service the car and the two see each other face to face for the first time since Guy had gone to Morocco. 

The music of this final scene is what I have chosen for this post here.  Tear-jerker?  Tell me about it!  It's an absolute soup of betrayal, sadness, regret, broken promises, lot dreams, what might have been...all this and much more.  And yet both of them had done well, were in loving marriages, each have a child, and were financially secure.  They both have good lives with good spouses.  I don't think that Guy was wishing he had Genevieve, and I don't think Genevieve was wishing she had Guy.  They both ended up with the lives they wanted, just not with each other.  But there is something painful about having loved somebody so much long ago but that you no longer have in your life, and cannot have in your life (for one thing, there is no place for your previous loved ones in the lives of your present ones).  So yes, despite having an abundance now, the loss of the previous is nevertheless an immense wound that can never completely go away.  As I have said countless times before, the larger the love, the larger the grief.  However, this also means that deep inside that grief is the power of that love.  So, when you feel sad, you also feel love.

This movie held such a grip on me that for several weeks after I saw it, every couple of days I would watch again the final two sections of the movie.  And even now, I still do so every once in a while.  Addicted to that experience of the grief that carries the love.  

  

    

   

SONGS OF THE HEART: Soldier In The Rain--March 1 2021

A couple of days ago, I got a letter in the mail from a very good friend of mine who lives in Sweden.  You all remember Sweden, don't you?  The country that did not lockdown their citizens, and apparently did very well health-wise compared against, say, California, which still isn't yet fully "open", but is quite close.  He tells me that the truth is that they did have lockdowns, but they weren't mandatory.  He explained that they trust their government (I am so glad that they can!) and the goverment trusts them.  So they left it up to the citizens to handle the situation however they felt best.  In a way that was  how it was here in the United States at the very beginning...American citizens who had travelled to China and had come back to the United States, if they had any symptoms, went to a hospital for two weeks.  I am not completely sure, but I think throughout the United State's history, when immigrants arrived after the long ocean voyage, they had a two-week lockdown in some approved facility, such as Ellis Island if they had arrived in New York.  That was to protect Americans from various potential diseases brought in from elsewhere.  Two weeks.  I always think of two weeks as the standard.  How did it ever become more than two weeks for citizens already living here?  How about more than a YEAR for people living where I do, in California?

Well, my friend said in his letter than now the county pandemic doctor in Vesterbotten, the the county where he lives in northern Sweden, proclaimed a mandatory lockdown on all the people living in his county.  Really?  Now?  After all that "trust" or last year?   He and his wife had hoped to go up to their new cabin in Lapland that they recently bought.  This is beyond the Arctic Circle.  They wanted to take in some good cross-country skiing, but now they can't leave their own county.  Lapland is even farther north than where they live.  Lapland is not, say, Stockholm, packed with people.  Does the doctor in Vesterbotten worry that they will spread to or from the raindeer?  Hey, Santa Clause delivered all those presents last Christmas!  The raindeer are healty; I know, because I got my presents, too.  I didn't see any alarming spike last December!

So now my friend and his wife are stuck at home; no much looking-forward to cross-country fun in the snow for them!  I thought that was really a bummer for them, but then I got busy with some things I needed to do at home, and turned on some music that could be heard all around the house, with wireless Rocketfish cordless transmission sending the music to the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, and my office.  So wherever I am in the house, special music can catch me and sometimes stop me in my tracks.

I had chosen Dave Grucin's album of Henry Mancini music, called "Two For The Road".  You might have remembered from my music of last year that Henry Mancini is my all time number one favorite music maker.  Well, Dave Grucin is one of my favorite arrangers (and boy do I keep aware of arrangers!), so this album is a wonderful combination of the work of musical geniuses.

In the paragraph above, I said that the music can sometimes stop me in my tracks...and that can be even if I have been stopped in my tracks by that song before!  I think some songs will forever stop me in my tracks every time I hear them.  

Then the song "Soldier In The Rain" came on, with its two double notes at the very beginning, dun dun, dun dun (for some reason those grab me every time, meaning that the music says "hey, listen, something very deep and special is about to be played").  I was stopped, and quickly found a place where I could sit down and listen to the song deeply.  "Soldier In The Rain", and especially this version, requires that you sit down and listen, partially in homage to its consideration of soldiers, but because a song that beautiful and heartfelt requires rapt attention.  I will even let a tear or two call, why not, the song is just so precious, and Diana Krall's singing is just so special.  Her voice goes straight into my heart.

Listening to this, I remembered that in my friend's letter, he happened to reference a song in my last year's LockDown Musical Interludes.   I was reminded that he had really liked that series of songs.  For the past several months, I had been especially emotionally involved with several songs that I seemed to want to listen to almost every day.  There was something just so touching and meaningful to me that I couldn't stop wanting to hear them.   I decided that the time had come again to put forth another collection of special songs, this time a slightly different theme.  At first I thought of them as being sad songs, which happen to have a special meaning to me, but "sad" is off-putting and the point of those songs is not sadness, but love...very deep love.  And not a love for, say, one person, even though there could be that, too, but what I feel in most of them is a love for virtually everybody.  After a year of lockdowns and mask wearing and being separated from so many people that we all had cared out, maybe even lost people permanently, aren't we really sad, actually, and there is no shame in it.  But that sadness is because of your love. 

I am a very extroverted person, and I feel for more than a year now that I have been imprisoned in solitary confinement in a supermax prison.  Yeah, I can talk with people on the phone, correspond on the Internet, go shopping at the grocery store and maybe exchance a few quips with somebody whose upper half of their face peers at me with beady eyes, the lower half is invisible.  I may be smiling at people, but how do they know it?

I care about people and I like caring about them. I bet you are the same.  I think you feel like I do, that you can BUST out into the world and let FLOW that love that has been generating among your inner thoughts.  These songs are like a magic carpet that you can ride into your deams, and as you ride you are each moment manifesting the elements of what you are dreaming of.  The time will come when it really will exist, made by the strength of your heart.

1.  Song name:  Soldier In The Rain

Music Composer:  Henry Mancini

Lyricists:  Alan and Marylin Bergman

Singer:  Diana Krall

Link to the song on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utDJYlnYBQ4

Liking Henry Mancini as I do, I have been obtaining every movie that contained Henry's music.  The movie of Soldier In The Rain was different than I had expectedit would be...its about two men in the army, one older man who seemed to know all the angles, played by Jackie Gleason, and a younger soldier who was enthusiastic but naive, played by Steve McQueen in a very different role for him.  The older soldier was a mentor for the younger one.  They had a very supportive friendship, which is sometimes hard for men to establish.  It seems that more often there is competition, instead.

I was surprised that the song was not a "theme song" that ran throughout the movie; in fact, I would have to watch the movie again to see is there even was any other music at all.  Throughout the whole movie, I kept waiting for that song to finally appear and when it did, I didn't think it was highlighting a particular event that seemed crucial or hugely meaningful.  But once the film was over, my realization was that the whole movie was about two men who loved each other, and by that I don't mean sexually, but a genuine love between people the way things SHOULD be.  How amazing to see that and how important it is and how many men have nothing like that at all.  They may have a powerful marriage, but endure a loneliness and pine for a connection with others of their own gender.  So really the song could have been placed anywhere in the movie, its meaning was everywhere and you feel that as the movie comes to an end.  Your may feel that there is a place in your heart that aches, that is like a bowl within you made to contain an expanse of love.

In The Post Office At Christmas Time

The post office is a crowded long wait in line nightmare at Christmas time at the best of times, but wow, imagine it during the renewed Coved fears.  I had run out of stamps and since I like to get sheets of commemorative stamps instead of generic stamps like I could get at the grocery story, I had to go to the post office.  Also, I had Christmas cards to mail, so mailing them directly at the post office seemed like there would be a better chance of getting them to their destination in time for Christmas.  

 

The first thing I saw when I went inside were two long lines, one headed toward the business end of the post office and the other headed toward the mail drop/package bin and next to it the self-service machine.  But the mail drop/package bin had a notice across it saying “Out of Order”, which was causing consternation for those who had planned on simply dropping in their packages.  So essentially that was a line for the self-service machine.

 

Not being able to mail my Christmas cards at the mail drop, I would be handing them to the person who would sell me the stamps, I now wanted to get into the other line.

 

I almost needed binoculars in order to see the end of the line.  It went all the way down to the farthest end of the post office way past the long rows of P.O. boxes.  This was because of the rule of keeping your distance from others, six feet apart.  I realized that it probably wasn’t any more crowded than normal (for Christmas), it just looked like it, because people in the line had to be so spread apart.  It was a peculiar “psy-op” in that it looked impossible and it was that visual impression that demoralized the people. That and having to wear the masks, of course, which means lining up in an impossible situation surrounded by unhappy people whose faces you can’t fully see and therefore emotionally “read”, coupled with a sense held by some that everyone else in there was a carrier of contagion.  Because of all of this, it felt to me like we were cattle in a line for slaughter.

 

Knowing that this was going to take some time, I settled into observing all that was going on around me. I watched people come into the front door and then look up and down the two long lines and realize what they were in for.  Many of them couldn’t grasp that whichever of the lines they wanted was really that far down (I swear, it was like being at the DMV), as if their vision simply didn’t extend that far.  So they would step into the line between two people social distancing not too far from the entrance door that was in actuality in the front 1/3 of the line. Of course they would be told, “The line is down there” and they were forced to look way down to where the ends of the lines really were.  They would stand there helpless for a while, as if pondering whether they could actually manage remaining where they had butted in (can you fight a person whose face you can't fully see?), or was it even worth staying in the post office at that time.  But soon enough social pressure squeezed them out and they crept on down to the end of line.

 

Every once in a while it would be an extremely elderly person who would come in and perform that “getting into the line too far forward” and when it began to happen to me, a wave of guilt washed over me, wondering if maybe I had a social duty to let them take my place in line while I went all the way down to the end of the line. It didn’t seem to me that these people could stand very long and therefore needed the courtesy of being allowed to butt in, somewhat like giving your seat to an elderly person on a crowded bus (and in Los Angeles, EVERY bus is crowded, which means that no man ever gets to sit), but as this was a “new” morality that I hadn’t so far evaluated, and due to the masks we all were less human anyway, I just stood my ground and defended my place in line.  And anyway, periodically giving up my place in line every time an elderly person came in meant that I would never be able to complete my task.

 

Who I most felt sorry for were the people who came in carrying arms full of packages they wanted to mail.  There was quite a lot of that and I figured that normally those packages would have been gifts that they would have brought to the recipients in person, but now that “Christmas was cancelled” and people were forbidden to have Christmas guests, they had to mail the gifts, instead.

 

One of those burdened with packages was the woman in front of me, who seemed to periodically accost me with evil eyes peering over the top of her mask to make sure that I kept my distance from her as by this time waves of people kept flowing between us since we were now at the level of the entrance door.  It was very tiresome for me to have to constantly jockey my position to accommodate the stream of people coming in the door, attempting to butt in front of me, and keep an acceptable distance from the package-laden women in front of me.

 

But who had it worse was an elderly man waiting in the self-service line holding too many small packages.  Finally his arms gave out and he dropped the whole load onto the floor.  As he was close to me, I felt that I should help him pick them all up, but I imagined him being horrified by my attempt to help, “Don’t you TOUCH these, don’t you know there is a pandemic going on!”, but he solved the problem for me by just leaving them on the floor and shuffling them forward with his feet.

 

This led my awareness to the area of the self-serve machine and I saw strangers helping other strangers figure out how to work it. That was nice.  And then somebody realized that the sign indicating that the mail drop/package bin was out of order only applied to the package bin, not the mail drop.  So he took it upon himself to re-adjust the sign so that it was clear that it applied only to the package bin.  That alone cause five or six people to get out of line, mail their letters, and then leave the post office.  Things were now easing up.

 

Later, a man inside the business end of the post office finished his transaction and as he was walking out, he saw the elderly man shuffling his numerous packages on the floor. He came up to him and pointed out a large cloth bin that was near the counter where he had been.  He said, “If you have already put postage on your packages, all you need to do is put them into that bin.”  Sure enough, the elderly man had already put postage on his packages, so he hadn’t needed to be in the line for the self-service machine. He thanked the man, shuffled the packages to the cloth bin, put in his packages, and then left!

 

By now, the woman in front of me felt that we were close enough to the business end of the post office so she stepped ahead and put her packages on the counter that separated the line of people from the post office windows.  From then on, when she got back up there, she would just need to keep pushing the packages down the counter until it was her turn to go to one of the windows.  When she came back to her place in line in front of me, I said, “That was smart!  I had been worried about you holding those heavy packages so long.”

 

She said, “They weren’t really very heavy, but they were awkward.”

 

I said, “Yeah, they were tiring to your arms,” and she nodded “that they were.”

 

Ultimately we got up to the head of the line, and then it was my turn.  They had on display numerous commemorative stamps and I said to the post office woman, “I don’t want to take up your time, but which of these do you have on hand.”  I knew from experience that they wouldn’t have all of them and with all these people waiting on line, I didn’t want to take a lot of time selecting my stamps.

 

She pointed to the most colorful one and said, “We have ‘Bugs Bunny’”.  I said, “That would be great, let me have a sheet of that one, please.”  They were very cute and funny stamps, enough to brighten ones day with a laugh.  I paid for them and then showed her the envelopes and said, “Can I give these to you or should I put them into the mail slot?”, referring to the one that we all thought had been out of order but which the helpful man revealed it wasn’t.  She said, “Oh, that’s okay, give them to me.”

 

I was then complete and as I walked out of the post office, I said to a person who had just come in, “The line moves faster than it looks.”

 

Outside on the parking lot, the woman who had been in front of me in line had her mask off and was backing her car out of its parking space.  She saw me, gave me a big smile and a wave.  I peeled off my mask, waved back at her, and gave her a hearty “Have a Merry Christmas!”

The Children Are The First To Crack

I have lived in this huge apartment/condo complex for around ten years now and this is the first time the management has ever sent out an alert regarding vandalism from the children who live here.  The notice said that children have damaged the plants and beautiful landscaping that was put in last month, and they have been getting into the laundry and damaging the washing machines and dryers.  Also, they have been playing around the cars in the parking garages and in the driveways, which has long been forbidden.  The management has now threated to evict any family whose children damage property.

 

This complex has a large swimming pool, a kiddie wading pool, an indoor basketball court, a gymnasium, a billiards room, a party room, several outdoor grills and picnic tables where people have parties and birthday parties, and lots of grass to play on. In the summers, the management provides a free camp for young children involving games, crafts, sport tournaments, and other activities.

 

But ever since the first lockdown in mid march, due to Coved all these facilities have been closed. The quad is really a ghost town most of the day.  I hardly ever see an adult at all.  I do see children after 3:00 when “home schooling” ends for the day, but it is hard for them to find places to play, thus they are in the garages and I guess in the planters, and so on.  Also, I am certain their parents are under various stresses and that affects children as well.

 

This year there was no summer, no beach, no family summer trip, no birthday parties, no Halloween, no Thanksgiving, and now the biggest of all, the “cancelling of Christmas” to whatever extreme that really means.  I’ve been getting in the mail gift catalogues featuring photos of beaming children on Christmas morning getting the toys that wanted, and adults, too, photos of a happy Dad with his new golf driver or a smiling Mom with something beautiful for the home or to wear.

 

Children thrive on ritual…and adults, too.  When I think over my own childhood, there were dozens of things we had to have each year or something was wrong.  Here are just a few examples.

 

For my birthdays, my mother would take us and my friends to a local amusement park.  It was like our own tiny Disneyland and we never got tired of it.  My two sisters and brother had summer birthdays, so their parties involved diving for pennies in the swimming pool and having barbecues outside by the pool

 

Always every summer the family go out into the woods for a picnic, and weekly our mother would take us to the beach at Santa Cruz to play in the waves.

 

If we took a driving trip across country to visit our relatives in North Carolina, we loved it whenever there was a “bumpy ride” where the highway went way up and down, Dad would drive faster than normal because the thrill ride made us all scream and laugh.  Our parents would stop at every “see the hila monster” or “rattlesnake”, whatever junk attraction there was in some small town off the road.  When it was very hot, there was always that obligatory stop at Dairy Queen.

 

At least once every month, the family would go to the drive-in movie and we would wear our pajamas.

 

On Thanksgiving, each one of us had to have one of those turkey candles at our place setting and loved to see whose turkey would remain burning the longest (you know some of those were fickle birds!).  That was always a heated contest, even our father got in on it, to the extent that one Thanksgiving, my brother’s and or father’s candle was still burning after we finished our meal, so we kept it burning on the dining room table while we went into the family room to watch the annual “Wizard of Oz” on television. When it was time to get dessert, Mom saw that the dining room table was on fire due to those turkey candles that had gone on the loose!  We have no idea who won that contest that year, but the dining room table wore its newly-created tattoo for the rest of its useful life.

 

Speaking of fire hazards, every Fourth of July Mom and Dad would get us a huge “block party” fireworks kit and Dad would put up on the tennis court a complex of ladders for attaching various spinning fireworks to and we had the neighbors and friends come over for the festivities and we all would all have hot cider and hot dogs.  Mom armed us all with numerous sparklers that we loved to toss far up in the air.  Apparently one Fourth of July somebody’s sparker ended up buried in the tanbark that was all over the ground near there and there it continued to smolder for years!  Mom kept a garden hose dripping in the vicinity of that slow burn, which would slowly migrate across the landscape, but never actually burned out.  She said that for sure she was on some fireman’s “bad list”, since the Fourth of July block parties and throwing the sparklers up in the air never abated. 

 

Christmas of course had its own long list of must-does.  For example, we had to have an advent calendar, the Christmas count-down had to begin.  Naturally we all were involved in decorating the Christmas tree (some years we had more than one in the house) and Mom had to decorate everything in a Christmas theme—pillows on the couches that she had made and towels in the bathrooms and Christmas themed plates and drinking glasses and things hanging on every doorknob and Christmas lights all around outside.  Christmas music played all day throughout the house and also outside. Of course we had to get in the car and go all over everywhere (Atherton where we lived, and Menlo Park, and Palo Alto) to see the Christmas lights.  We read all the dozens of Christmas cards that our parents would get from friends from all around the country; we children new who all those people were.  When Christmas was over, we read all the Christmas cards again and then had the ritual of burning them in the fire place one at a time (sending all those good wishes up into the ethers).  We had fire burning in all the fire places in the house, which means in the living room, the bar, the kitchen, the family room, our parents’ room, and outside by the pool.  What’s Christmas without a fire in a fireplace in almost every room?

 

We children would spend hours lying on the floor by the Christmas tree and would look at the gorgeously wrapped presents that were there and if it had our name on it, we tried to guess what it was.  These were presents from Mom and Dad and each other, as well as gifts from our friends and friends of our parents and certain relatives.  

 

Christmas Eve, we kids were just too wound up to stand it, so Mom dropped us off at a movie theater and every year we would marvel how it was light when we went into the theater and dark when we came back out after the movie.  Then the family ate dinner at a restaurant called “Gale’s” in Menlo Park, which, sadly, no longer exists.  It always had to be Gales for Christmas eve dinner, just because.

 

We children were allowed to open just ONE present before going to bed that night, and it had to be from one of the siblings. Obviously the presents from Santa Clause would arrive sometime in the night.  Dad would get up on the roof and stomp around and say “Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!” (we figured out who it had been years later).  That was magical for me even when I was old enough to learn the “truth” about Santa Clause, because I believed and still do.

 

We made a big deal of leaving cookies and milk for Santa.  When Mom got into health food, Santa got “Tiger’s milk”, because he needed to have strength for his mission of giving toys to all the boys and girls. (P.S. In our family, it wasn’t “good children” and “bad children”—all Children deserved love from Santa Clause.) And every Christmas morning we made sure that Santa had left us a thank-note for the delicious cookies and the empowering Tiger’s Milk.

 

I think back on these things, and so much more, and appreciate how glorious and powerful our childhood was, and how our rituals wove together the whole family and actually the whole culture.  And Christmas was especially powerful, so that its power lasted within far into my adulthood. I think it remained in our mother’s heart all her life.  Fortunately, we all were mostly able to get together every year, even though there had been a lot of moving about so that no longer were we children living near each other, or near our parents.  But we would drive, fly, or take a train to be together whenever possible, which was most of the time.

 

Ritual keeps you whole, moral, caring, and always getting wiser.  Messing with this is destructive.  And I think when cherished rituals are messed with, it is the children who are the first to crack.  It is like the rug is pulled out from under them, quickly or slowly, and they no longer feel secure about where they are anymore.  And absolutely they need to play.  That is really their main job and requirement, playing, and what I say about toys is that toys are a child’s tools.  They need those in order to accomplish and to grow up.

 

Everybody must be aware of not letting precious rituals slip away.  And when the children crack, you will be next, and somewhere before that is the time to say “enough”.  Do not let whom you were get taken over, but proudly grab onto it will all your might.  You are the sovereign.

HUGGING A BIKER

For the three years I lived back in my home town of Asheville, North Carolina, I had a job as a customer service representative at a medical supply company.  I started there as a temp from an agency, but then my boss there ended up hiring me.

 

There were many things that I could say about that job, good and bad, that I may write about in other entries.  On the whole, though, the entire experience was as a good one where I got to work with some very admirable people, and be involved in a kind of work that is clearly beneficial to the world.  It was a job that assisted in the getting into the hands of hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, and even retail customers even though this was primarily a wholesale company.  

 

There were four of us working in that position, each one having a cubicle.  I was the newest one of the four, and at first it seemed that I could not possibly function in that job.  The company sold any and everything that had to do with anything medical, everything from needles to band aids to surgical kits to nurses clothing to medications to examination tables to waiting room furniture to art on the walls, and much, much more.

 

Most of the orders came in via telephone (although some came via fax) and the phones rang constantly. Many of the people who were calling to order supplies would have only the sparsest description, such as, “we need another case of shot needles”, and it was up to use to know what were the ones they liked, or if they didn’t know what they needed, it was up to us to hurry up and figure it out.  Yes, the company also had a sales force that was mostly out in the field, but for the most part, the actual connections were with the customer service representatives.

 

Thank goodness I discovered that the company had copious catalogues and I filled the shelves in my cubicle with them all, and during whatever time I could spare, I would pour through them to learn all the items they had in them.  The other reps blew me away, because they would rattle out the appropriate item numbers, of which there were an infinite amount.  “Oh, you need the BD102439-X, would you like a dozen more cases?”  I would hear that kind of thing coming from, say, the cubicle next to me, and I would nearly be paralyzed, how could I ever function like that? I have trouble remembering even my own telephone number, let alone intimately know millions of equipment item numbers.  Learning Japanese would be easier that that!

 

But sure enough, and miraculously, those numbers and the characteristics of every kind of medical supply ultimately got burned into my brain, and I had developed numerous hospitals and medical offices whose employees considered me to be their chosen customer service representative.  

 

Throughout all this, I had the boss who had hired me, Charley, who was a southern “good ol’ boy” (which I say positively, not negatively).  He would arrive in to work on his impressive Harley.  When he and his wife went on vacation, they went on bike/camping/fishing trips all around the south, Charley in front, his wife hugging him from behind.  He was a no-nonsense, tough, strict man with high work standards, who would fire on a dime, yet watched over me kindly.  He liked my progress and if representatives of a hospital called him up to asked him if I could come their hospital to meet all of them and have a lunch with them, he would let me go, because he knew that ours wasn’t the only medical supply company in town and as you know, often the most important business connection is the person you get on the phone and how they handle you.  So a guy like me was not only keeping the business, but actually expanding it.  There were many lessons I got from that job that helped me a lot later since.  I think working in customer service might even be a better education than college.

 

Charley was also generous with my raises, which of course I was greatly thankful for.  And he didn’t stop me from taking what I considered to be additional privileges that were fun for me but also helpful for the company. I was allowed in the warehouse portion of the building where customer service reps normally didn’t go. Sometimes a client would be in a lurch and needed to make sure that we had a certain item that they needed in a hurry, so I would go into the warehouse to verify that what they wanted was actually in stock (not necessarily being dependent upon the data on the computer) and maybe pick their order myself, had permission to drive the picking machine that could elevate you way up to the top shelves in the warehouse.  If, alas, we were out of something that was desperately needed, I could nose around the stacks and find a suitable substitute that was actually on hand, and take it all over to the shipping department for immediate packing up for delivery.  

 

I also developed the useful privilege of going into the medicine freezers.  That was probably the most sacrosanct area of the warehouse. Every employee needed to pass the “pee test” before hire, and then would be sprung upon us at random later, because there were some powerful drugs (narcotics) locked up in those freezers. There were certain series of medications that patients of a doctor’s office would be on that required having the same lot number in a series, let’s say a series of four of a particular medicine. There were some item pickers in the warehouse who would send out the correct medication by name, but neglect selecting the correct lot number if part of a required series, which was a pain for the pickers, but crucial for the patient.  It was customer service who would receive those angry phone calls from the doctor’s office, saying that the wrong lot number had been sent out.  So I took it upon myself to find the right ones myself whenever an office ordered one of those medications.  Sometimes you had to really hunt around stacks of medications in order to find one with the right lot number.  Instead of interfering, I was helping the busy stock pickers, plus helping the patients.  I also developed good relations with the packers, becoming good friends with them, which also made my job a whole lot easier since speed and accuracy in shipping was sometimes a crucial thing when it came to “on-time” medical supplies and sending out the wrong thing was not acceptable.

 

Also, I became the go-to person for retail sales, people from the general public who would drive out to the industrial boonies where we were to buy retail supplies from us at wholesale prices.  Most of them were on Medicare and were getting some rebates on their supplies that were needed chronically, such as colonoscopy bags, catheters, and feeding tubes. I was the only one there who wasn’t afraid of filling out the Medicare forms, and when customers had troubles getting their purchases accepted by Medicare, they would come back to me and I would go to bat for them by calling Medicare and making sure those customers got the rebates they were due.

 

Charley always seemed to keep a watchful eye on all this that was going on and apparently he was appreciating what I was doing, and lets just say that not every boss I ever had in my life was good like that.

 

Since I had become a “voice” between the company and the outer world, Charley happened to let me know that the company’s policy was to never give out any references regarding former employees.  I have mentioned that Charley would fire on a dime, well, just in case somebody happened to call me in order to obtain an evaluation of a former employee, he wanted me to know that nobody was to say anything about a former employee other than they worked there from this date to that one, but nothing else whatsoever.  

 

Since a good friend of mine had been hired from the place, I guess he felt that my friend might ask me to be a reference for him as he attempted to get a new job.  I assumed that Charley figured this might happen and so he wanted me to know that I was not allowed to say anything.  (As it happened, my friend never asked for that.)

 

I said to Charley, “Really, why?”  He explained that saying something bad about a former employee might lead to the company being sued, and they wanted to avoid that.

 

I said, “Yeah, but what about the good employees?  Don’t they deserve to have their good performances shared?” 

 

He said, “Well, you can’t do that, because then it becomes clear when you are avoiding giving out a bad reference when you give out only the good ones.  The safest course is to never say anything about their performance no matter what.  And besides, what do we care, they are people who left us, so we really have no skin in their game anyway.”

 

Well, as time moved on, as much as I loved living back in my home town, I decided to move back to California.  It was kind of funny to see how many of my coworkers were scared for me at the prospect of going back to California, and to Los Angeles, no less (that hellhole!).  I had always felt that California had a good reputation with people in other states, and in fact maybe was even envied, but that is actually not always the case. Their general attitude about my moving back there was, “Oh, please be careful!  We wouldn’t want to even visitthere!” 

 

It’s funny, because as I think back on it, I remember reading many years ago an article by a man living in Argentina who went on a trip in his Volkswagen from the Tierra Del Fuego all the way up to the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska.  Reading that, I thought to myself that I would love to be able to go on a trip like that (the entire west coast of the Pacific Ocean), but I would be too afraid to.  Surely there were some extremely dangerous locations on that route, portions of Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras (take your pick), Mexico (with the drug cartels, for heaven’s sake), even (or especially) the Alaska Highway, from which I imagined ones car ending up thoroughly pummeled by loose rocks along the way, but he wrote that the trip was glorious and the most dangerous place on that whole trip wasLos Angeles!

 

It actually was a sad day when I had to tell Charley that I was going to go back to California.  I had managed to really make a place for myself in that company where I had ended up even having a positive reputation up in the national headquarters in Richmond, Virginia.  On my last day there, they gave me a really nice going away party with a delicious farewell cake and some wonderful parting gifts. And some people were crying and it was all I could do to not be crying myself.  When the time came to leave the building, I went into Charley’s office to say goodbye.  I realized how much he had meant to me, so, overcome by emotion, I, “California style”, gave him a big hug.

 

As I hugged him, he just stood there awkwardly and embarrassed, with his arms at his sides as I hugged him, nor returning my hug.  Uh oh, now I was worried, was this a big mistake?  Men didn’t hug men?  This southern good ‘ol boy, Harley biker man, probably wasn’t taking this hug very well.  So I quickly backed away, thanking him for the fruitful years I had enjoyed there, and then slinked out of there with the packages of my farewell gifts.

 

There is a whole lot of story that follows between that farewell and finally getting myself into Los Angeles, which will be worth some other stories.  But meanwhile, let me say that one thing genuinely bad about Los Angeles is that it is very difficult to get a job here, especially if you have moved in from some other state.  For one thing, the competition is fierce (it’s the same in New York City, as well). It seems that you have to pay some sort of dues, such as I did by doing a couple of years of “temp work” to prove that you really “mean it”, that you hadn’t come to L.A. with the dream of getting into the movies (which, by the way, I actually had come here for that, but that is a “whole nother” story, too). So many people cram into Los Angeles from some other place, do not manage to make a go of it (mostly your money runs out), and then bounce back out again to wherever they had come from.  People hiring for “other” jobs want to make sure that it is this job you really want, not something to tide you over while you struggle to get that big movie part.

 

So I sure did my share of spreading around my resume, looking for a job.  One of the places I went to was a medical supply company in the Los Angeles area.  After all, I had already done three years of work in that field in North Carolina. The HR person interviewed me and studied my resume.  She said that she wanted to check out my references and I was to call her a few days later to see what was up.

 

So a few days later, I did call her and she said, “I am sorry, the person who was leaving decided to stay on after all, so the position ends up being no longer open.  It’s too bad, because you come highly recommended. They sure did rave about your performance at that medical company in North Carolina.  The person I talked with said that we should snap you up, that they have maintained your cubical there as a shrine!”

 

I thought to myself, uh oh, who was that she talked with, giving out a rave review was explicitly against their rules!  I told her that I really appreciated hearing that, would she mind telling me the name of the person she talked to.  She said, “Oh, it was a man named Charley.  He said that he had been your boss there.”

 

Charley!  You rascal! You southern good ol’ boy Harley biker, I guess that goodbye hug from me was okay after all.

THE WORLD NEEDS PEOPLE

In what I think of as in the "good news" category, I happened to get a travel e-mail entitled "The Most Beautiful Small Towns In The World".   (There happen to be other variations of that, as well, such as "The Most Beautiful Small Towns In The United States", but it was the global one that grabbed by attention).

 

Ever since Coved, I had been immediately deleting all travel e-mails coming my way, because I can't go to any of those places anyway, so what is the point, but this one interested me and I was blown away by the beauty of each town shown.  Every one of them was a place that I could completely see going to, maybe that would be possible someday.  

 

As I looked at the pictures, I suddenly had an important thought:  those Most Beautiful Small Towns in the World require people.  I don't mean visitors, or a small corps of demonic "elites" who will remain after all their yearning population diminishment is completed, but normal, real, organic human beings, living their free and individual lives.  What makes a Most Beautiful Small Town worth going to is not buildings and quaint streets and views of mountains or oceans, but normal people living there to have hotels and restaurants and cooks and bartenders and stores and entertainment venues, and not existing for the benefit of tourists, but because of their having their own lives that they live for themselves and only incidentally happen to also maintain for the benefit of those who come through there for a visit. Visitors need to have there a sense of hospitality and discovery and creation of delicious food, and charming cultural events, and unique arts and crafts, and maybe even intriguing languages that express different points of view or help us to understand the meanings behind our own words.  

 

It is people who care about where they live who keep it going, have safety in the streets and keep their houses and gardens filled with color and in repair, who smile and are happy with each other, are proud of their town for its own sake, and are places where a visitor may feel like jumping up and join into a crowd of people dancing to the music of local musicians.  These are places where you can joyfully meld in among the people whose home this is.

 

NONE of this can exist if there are no free and independent people living lives that have meaning for themselves.  All the buildings would fade and crumble and the streets would shift and crack and the gardens would dry up.  Wild animals and the jungle would take over.  In short, if those who are demonic get what they want, there would be nothing beautiful left. Certainly not in their own quickly sagging ancient fleshy bodies overwrought with plastic surgery and all the heart transplants in the world (presumably done by medical robots).  We have already seen some of this.  Their future would just be filthy depressing concrete skyscrapers (until the next big earthquake) populated by countless semi-asleep human bodies connected to computer systems and surrounded by robots that few people would know how to fix or to correct the inevitable devastating screw-ups in the programs that had not been foreseen.

 

There would be no more innovations or art or music or any creativity at all, as it is only free and sovereign people who create such things.  Like how unemployed people given a minimum living wage would stop working, so would an "elite" who expect everyone else to be their slaves would stop doing things for themselves, and would stop learning and creating until they knew how to do anything for themselves.  In short, it all would be a hell of the greatest proportions for them and they would have no ability to extricate themselves from what they had committed by structurally damaging those who could fix the situation, or could have prevented it in the first place.

 

They think that with all their trillions or whatever measure of wealth, and their several mansions and their yachts and their private airplanes and corps of machines at their disposal that they would have it all, the entire empty planet would be theirs (the United Nations Agenda of whatever number they want), all theirs, to explore and to inhabit with no more "stupid sheeple" to disgust them and to clutter up the world and for them to steal from like taking candy from a baby because their victims did not spend all their time figuring out schemes by which they could take from others who were busy living their lives and caring for their families.  Finally they would feel that they had it made!

 

But then the time would come when what they had originally seen as a private paradise only for them, had inevitably degenerated into (metaphorically visually) looking more like the Highway of Death from Desert Storm or the jungle take-over of Cambodian ancient cities and temples.

 

Why is all this revelation a good thing?  Because what I have been thinking this whole time without understanding it concretely is that while they seem to have all the money and the power, and they have several decades of planning and laying down the ground work, and have utilized countless human data to determine how best to control a population by fear, I kept thinking but we have the people!  How is that a plus--scared, impoverished, separated, surprised, and indoctrinated people, of what use is that?  Clearly all these people can be easily steam-rolled all over; the people have "lost" before they even knew that there was a war.

 

Well, I finally saw the whole structure, the entire system, and how all this would impact the people who think they are in a separate and superior camp versus everybody else.  But they may as well feel the same separation from and superiority over the planet itself, and nature, and the sun and the stars.  They did not create this Universe and they are not even all that special as people versus all the others.  Somewhere along in their greed and in their narcissism they thought they were a species above and that they deserved to own it all and to control it all. Stop and think of what has happened to others throughout history who thought this way.   The current versions of those people think that it is high technology that makes the difference... now they can be as "gods" because never before had the world had this level of technology before.  Some even feel that they can become immortal.  (The Greeks have a story about that.)  Beyond the thought that only now do we have such a high level of technology might not be true (there is some evidence of there having been very highly technologically advanced people before us who managed to destroy themselves), we don't even have to go there.  Just a simple imagining a little bit forward to what it would be like for those who think they are superior if they got what they think they want, they will realize that they really don't want that.  Obviously, in every way, instead of being a great victory for them, it would be worse than their worst nightmare.

 

Let us all grasp that ourselves, and keep our minds on it not happening, not being trapped by fear, but instead filling that space with thoughts of all the great things we now will be able to do.  Let us realize that we are successfully coming out of a major transformative period that gives us a chance to enliven our deeper dreams with an expanded power.   Our continued existence is what will save them, as well as our selves.  Let them realize that in their own thoughts or dreams.  Ironically, they are the one who need to wake up.  Let's manifest a good future for all of us and fully understand, no matter who we are, we need other people, and every kind and type of people, fully creative and sovereign beings as we all were created to be.  All across the Earth.  That's what the world naturally has, we can see it clearly, and it is a sure bet that that is the way it should be.

 

The World Needs People.