Born to Kvetch

 

On a recent visit to Amsterdam, (May, 2023), we visited the famous 1639 Portuguese synagogue, which still serves the Sephardic community of Amsterdam today. At the bookstore, Michael Wex's book on the Yiddish language, Born to Kvetch, leaped out to me. What a photo! Well, I had to purchase a copy. which proved to be a very good read.

You see, although I don't wear a bowler hat and do not sport my forelocks in a payes, I, too, was born to kvetch, no doubt about it. (Kvetch is a Yiddish word meaning to complain. I noticed, months later, that the winning word in the National Spelling bee was knaidel, dumpling, which was pronounced in three syllables, The Yiddish kn is, however, monosyllabic. Well, I would have won that spelling bee, along with the Indian youth who won the prize. No surprises there, once I saw a comedy sketch in which an Indian boy won first prize in Ebonics), but the youth who won the spelling bee apparently had no idea what the word knaidel meant.

I kvetch a lot. I sometimes feel quite inadequate, blaming myself for not helping my fellow human beings enough. And I kvetch about being old and afflicted with Parkinson's Disease; I torture myself that it might now be too late to accomplish things I would like.

Dorsett, stop complaining!  You still can talk; you still can walk; you still can write.

Yes, you still can walk, albeit with a cane. Maybe a little gratitude will help unkvetch the frown on your face when you  just have to sit down. So I decided to try it.   

So many things I take for granted. With a flip of a switch, day extends into the night. With a flip of the wrist, I experience the benefits of indoor plumbing. Though my handwriting has become unreadable, I can still tap words into my computer. I have friends; I have acquaintances. Even more important, I have a wonderful wife and a wonderful son. Though I don't see well at all, I am not totally blind, and still can read with the help of large-print books.  I've reached old age, no longer dependent on a so-called living wage. As my stepfather once said, any day that you're still breathing is a good day. Or as a comedian once said, if you're not in the obituary, eat breakfast. I shall with a smile. 

Yeah, right. I repeat: Dorsett, stop kvetching!

2.

For our nature book club, we recently read  a very good book, The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackermann. We  learned that 'bird brain' is an unfair characterization of the neurology of birds. The neurons are small, yes but they pack a whallop. Birds are even theorized to start fires, so they can have easy access to stampeding prey. Some species, such as turkey vultures, use their keen sense of smell to locate carrion. Corvids and parrots are amazing problem-solvers. The species variation is great, although it’s hard to agree  with the alas! part of pigeons on the grass, alas, alas—pigeons are not the brightest bulbs in the avian kingdom, although they are far from simple.

Observing birds closely, I decided I needed to add a bird house to my back yard. My son Philip purchased a see-through bird house of clear plastic which I could attach to my window. This allows us to watch birds eat the feed we have placed in the bird house. We got to know a cardinal pair, (Cardinal Joseph and Sunyatta) and Morris the squirrel; plus a host of many other birds.

As you might imagine, it inspired me to write a poem, “The Diaphanous Bird House,” which follows:

John feels he has seeds left to scatter

Before he unmatters forever--

Soon, on the snowside of the glass,

Scarlet amazement appears.

 

The cardinal takes what Crumplejohn offers:

A handful of protein, caraways seeds.

A robin alights; a squirrel approaches;

Red wings soar skyward; John disappears.

John’s ego disappears at the amazing sight; for a while there is no border between the world and him. (I hope he doesn’t come across as being too ‘crumpled.’) John was ecstatic, that is, beside himself with joy. A good approximation about how I felt.

O the glorious existence of nature, who is neither a he, she, or it. Existence without ego is the garden of Eden, which is populated not only by birds, but by (sometimes) wise flightless beings, us—we sometimes come close to reality and all of us can put in effort to come closer. But there is a catch.

Birds are ‘nervous,’ always on alert for potential predators. . If, say, a sparrow weren’t alert and ready to fly away at the slightest hint of danger, from a perceived threat to a warning call from fellow feathered creature, how long would the sparrow survive? If a sparrow’s perennial alertness relaxed, you’d find more satisfied raptors in the world than there actually are. Birds have to be always alert; if not, there wouldn’t be any birds.

So here’s another reason not to kvetch. Humans are no longer prey to other animals. We don’t have to worry—the vast majority of us, at least—that a tiger or bear is going to pounce and remove us from Earth as efficiently as an eagle with a mouse in its talons.

So be thankful! And let me end with a final kvetch. Human beings prey on each other.  homo homini lupusi man is wolf to ,man. (Which is an insult to wolves; wolves  need to hunt to feed fellow wolves; their ‘evil’ is thus severely limited.

So be thankful that planes overhead contain passengers and not bombs. Be thankful and do what you can to bring peace to those areas where planes drop bombs.

So let me be very thankful for what we have. While it lasts. Stop kvetching and start helping~ Kvetching doesn’t do any good. I have, in my old age, still a lot to learn.

Parkinson's Diary: Episode Seven, Another Progress Report

 

Yesterday, I had an appointment with my neurologist/mobility physician who handles my issues with Parkinson's Disease. I am doing well, although I definitely have that ailment.  He increased my dosage of Sinemet, the mainstay in Parkinson treatment. This was a four month follow-up.

I certainly have problems with ambulation, but this is to be expected. My tremor is not a big issue; it’s mostly on the left side. One of the main things that it affects is my typing—this blog, for instance, has to be carefully edited and all those extra z’s and s’s removed. My handwriting continues to be awful—being almost legally blind doesn’t help. I’ve given up writing long-hand, since it is so difficult to read my own writing that I have to recompose whatever I’m writing when I try to enter it into a computer. Since vision is such a problem, I need to dictate into the computer.

--Stop! A significant new problem: the new dose of the Parkinson’s medicine. I took it for a few days, and noticed a distinct improvement with my mobility issues. However, a side effect soon became apparent. The medicine, Sinemet, is a combination of carbidopa and  leva dopa. The carbidopa helps the medicine pass through the blood brain barrier into the brain. There it can enter the basal ganglia, the mobility centers of the brain, and help motor function. Yet, I imagine, that its effects on the brain aren’t limited to the basal ganglia. I began to be confused. I still was aware of my surroundings, but the feeling bordered on panic. Is this a side effect that would diminish with continued use of the drug? Perhaps, but the side effect was so great that I’d rather deal with reduced mobility, at least for the time being. So I decided to take the increased dosage at night, which, I presume, will help me get out of bed better in the morning.—The medicine works, but if I can’t function, it’s best to stay seated!

….Well,I'm  seate--again.

R.I.P. Alexei Navalny

Today we  learned about the death of Alexei Navalny, who died--undoubtedly an unnatural death--at the age of 47, while imprisoned in the Russian gulag. I mourn him as an American Russian literary patriot. It's as if Anna Karenina came back to life, only to put her neck down on the tracks of the Long Island Railroad during rush hour after listening to the news--with an emphasis on the dreadful news from Russia. The bloody mess on the tracks leaves us with an imitation Stalin who has killed  a real hero. Yes, another tear trickles down the cheek of Mother Russia, beset as she is with the attempts of Tucker Carlson to  suckle at her breast. (Poor Mother Russia! One breast free only because Trump is trying to grab her by the p.)

Was Navalny murdered in prison? Judging from Putin's well-deserved reputation of brutality and the fact that Navalny had  previously been poisoned by him, it is likely. But we may never know for sure. Putin's denial of involvement is what we expect from such a brutal dictator, who cannot tolerate opposition--and Navalny was his chief opponent in Russia. Yet even if we never know the cause of the Russian hero's death, it is clear that Putin at the very least significantly contributed to it.  Putin unjustly imprisoned him, and an Arctic prison is light-years away from a family picnic.  The fact that he was photographed the day before indicates the possibility both of poisoning and of a heart attack. In either case, Putin should be put on the death certificate as cause of death. One thinks of Dostoevsky before a firing squad, that unbenownst to him, shot blanks by order of the secret police. Except here the brutality of the secret policeman is not in question.

It's as if all the greats of Russian culture are pointing toward that neo-Stalinist monster while chanting, "j'accuse."  As in the past, Russian people  don't seem to be listening.

Yesterday, I listened to a performance of Tchaikowsky's great Sixth Symphony.  The famous, deservedly very famous melody from the  first movement, repeated later on, for me was the pefect musical expression for the contemporary Russian mess. Tchaikowsky died soon after he composed it; society was crushing him. When will there be a silver lining to the dark storm cloud that is Putin? Not any time soon, I'm afraid.

But it will come. Music expresses all emotions, so let me end with positive notes. Putin's barbarity will not defeat Mother Russia forever. (In my lifetime? Alas...)

But that day of liberation will come. The day when Putinism will be gone forever, is beautifully expressed by a chorus from Mozart's opera,  Idomeneo. "The sea is calm. Let's proceed; everything is reassuring.  We will have a happy future. Hush, hush, let's get going."

This music reveals what human beings are  capable of. Mother Russia, please wake up! Now!

(If you can't play this video, type in "Placido e il mar" on YouTube and please listen to it there.)

What Parkinson's Has Taught Me

I slwalk, yet still practice my art. (I can!

Can I still travel with walker and cane?)

My secret is happiness: I still love! I still breathe! Yet

the knives in my knees haven’t crippled my heart.

What a privilege it is to be humble! What a privilege it is to believe.

Thomas Dorsett,  Colombia, 2024

A 'Terrible' Sonnet by Hopkins

 

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

     I cast for comfort that I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile

's not wrung, see you, unforseen times rather--as skies

Betweenpie mountains--lights a lovely mile.

In this poem, Hopkins gives himself good advice, which he unfortunately never heeded. Hopkins was, of course, very religious in the conventional sense; but he got, in my opinion at least, the message of religion only half-right. The commandment of all religions is to love one’s neighbor as oneself; attempting to love one’s neighbor while despising oneself is always misplaced. We can look at the great commandment then not as a commandment at all but as a statement of fact: One loves one’s neighbor only to the degree that one has love for oneself. Hopkins once wrote this beautiful line: “There lives the deepest freshness deep down things.” If one couldn’t find that deepest freshness deep down things in oneself, one wasn’t looking hard enough or was looking in the wrong direction.

It is well known that Hopkins had a strong carnal nature. His sexual orientation was basically homosexual. He once wrote that he decided not to become a painter or sculptor because he would have to deal drawing naked men, which presumably caused him much grief and even panic.  He decided that the only way for him to overcome his self-disgust was by giving himself up to God--The god of the Catholic Church, which strictly forbade homosexuality and masturbation.

We’ve learned a lot since Victorian times. Homosexuality is no longer synonymous with sin for the very reason that gays are able to love--one must agree with the current pope that in this regard, “Who am I to judge?”

I do not wish to psychoanalyze Hopkins’s sexuality here; I just present it as a potential source of his self-disgust. That he was a very unhappy man and rejected himself is obvious from reading his poems, especially his later poems, when God didn’t deliver that which he expected: peace and joy. Obviously, you don’t have to be gay to suffer from an animus against the self; family pathology, peer rejection, and insistence in getting from the universe what the universe is unable to deliver are other frequent causes of self-rejection.

Life is a rare phenomenon in the universe, advanced life even rarer. We have all won the lottery, as it were, and are incredibly lucky to be alive. Most of us realize this; the genius Hopkins apparently did not. Let us now turn our attention to Hopkins’s great sonnet and indicate why his noble idea to be less hard on himself ultimately failed. Notice the obsession with self; the poem begins with ‘My own heart.’  He admits that he is ‘comfortless' and finds no way out from the hell he is in.

He refers to himself as 'poor Jackself’ who is 'sad' and ‘jaded’—not a good start. One gets the impression that Hopkins at this point in his life saw himself as a mess and threw himself on the mercy of God for relief. But God, for whatever reason, remained silent, which abetted Hopkins’s despair.

The poem ends with one of the most beautiful images in all poetry. Hopkins acknowledges that joy does indeed come sometimes, but it arises spontaneously. It ‘lights a lovely mile,’ as sunlight does when breaking through  clouds. Whenever I read these lovely lines, I seem to see sun breaking through; a beautiful image. That the clouds in his internal sky were largely self-caused, however, Hopkins would have probably denied. Too, too bad.

One has no right to reject oneself. If you share Hopkins’s despair, fight, fight, fight for your right for a happy life. (Humility and despair are polar opposites.) Remember what nuns and priests used to say, and perhaps still say, "God loves you just the way you are." Some of us moderns might say instead, "The universe accepts you just the way you are," not the way your ego insists how things should be.

A beautiful poem about a man who is stuck in a hell of his own making.

The Soul--Two Poems from the Deronda Review

 Two of my poems, along with the work of many other poets, appeared in the current edition (Vol. 10,  Vo, 1, 2023). 

The editor is Esther Cameron, who lives in Israel. She is an old friend. The subject of the curent edition was announced as, "The Soul."

Consummation

A shriveled prune accepts its pit.

Mouse on a glue trap, why resist?

Phantoms burn; limbs toss and turn,

Face mind's mirror: who exists?

Silence is also communication.

Expect nothing at all from death.

God hasn't sent you a postcard'

Answer it! Answer it!

Nature's unsigned letter is enough?

Advanced age lacks consolation?

It's never to late to meditate;

What joy it is to finally give up!

The Soul 

                  --for Esther Cameron

Everything is nothing to a star

Not to little you or me

With soul we thrive

Without it we flail

Even Leonardos nod

It's not in the pineal gland

With it we rise

Without it we fail

Martin Buber was right

Between us almost nothing yeasts

Despite lean and angry years

We're still at it

Whatever it is

It is

Ranjit and Nataraja

At Earlam we'll offer in each aging hand

the outstretched palm of Shiva, dancing

the it-doesn't-matter--though it-really-does

sidesteps of late middle-age.

On  the telephone he tells me

half of Richmond thinks he’s a terrorist,

while those on campus whose idol is diversity

think he’s very special since he’s brown.

 

He received the mint chutney I sent him;

he broke up with Ivana from Prague.

He switches the subject to beef in French fries

and, not that they should, but can’t they tell

 

a mullah from Saudi Arabia

from a half Catholic boy from Madras?

Shiva intervenes with the sound of creation,

static.  It bristles with loneliness.

 

Feminists, curries, Foucault.

I tell him, we’ll be there in June—

He, tossed between drums and fire;

We, falling beneath Shiva’s foot.

 

We arrive at Earlam sixteen hours late.

He has a new friend. Everything’s fine.

That night she shows us new moves she’s taught him.

Right, left, one, two—We join in the dance.

Note: I'm putting together my sixth book--it may well be my last-- and found this poem in an old file. The subject matter concerns  our dear nephew Ranjit, who passed away last year. At that time in our lives,  the time of the poem, Nirmala and I were in loco parentis for Ranjit. He came here about 25 years ago, and stayed with us for about a year. After much applying, he was accepted at Earlam College, a liberal college  in Richmond, Indiana. The poem has to do with our subsequent visit to Earlam for Ranji's undergraduate graduation. The reference to beef in French fries has to do with a  controversy at that time when, after years of assuring the Hindu community that there was no beef in Macdonal's French fries, they had to admit that beef fat was used to prepare the fries. 

I forgot about Ivana from Prague, one of Ranji's Earlam friends!

Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, is, of course, Shiva. I have been heavily influenced by Shaivite Hinduism, a.k.a. vedanta. There are many references to Shiva on my blog.

Oh, and thanks to Sudhir, Ranjit's uncle, for supplying the photo.