Jussie Smolletts, Us, and The Lying Piper of Queens

Would the fiery pants fit if you said, “Liar, Liar, pants on fire!” to your neighbor? To someone you don’t particularly like? To a politician? Perhaps the fiery pants would fit if you said this burning rhyme to the mirror? Are we becoming—or worse: have we become--a nation of liars? Stragglers, loners, losers—are those who refuse to lie naive, nitwitty, nuts?

I think a good case can be made for the proposition that there has been a marked increase in lying over the past fifty years or so. Wearing metaphorical fiery pants while wearing cool clothes has, I think, become the style. (Take what I write with a pinch of salt, please—I am old, and old people tend to idealize the past. I don’t. think I do, however. I acknowledge that life before the civil rights movement was not much of a life for millions of my fellow citizens. I also acknowledge that Joseph Goebbels was (again metaphorically) alive and well in the America of my birth. Still…)

There is evidence for this trend. Lying is certainly associated with narcissism—for the narcissist, truth is more or less what is subjectively to the narcissist's advantage—and this malady has been demonstrated to be on the increase. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and coauthor of The Narcissism Epidemic reports that millennials are scoring significantly higher on The Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which measures the sad, ongoing journey to selfie from self.

I am therefore confident that writing about the increase of the narcissist's pick-me-up, namely lying,  is not sour grapes from a bitter old man; I’m writing about sour grapes that are being consumed by the present generation as if they were candy. Sugar coated selfy grapes might seem sweet at first, but they are certainly not part of a heart-healthy diet!

I will provide two egregious examples of narcissistic lying. The first is the case of Jussie Smollett. The second is the pants-on-fire guy in the White House.

It seems to be quite likely that Mr. Smollett staged a hate crime in which he played the victim. He likely did this to gain sympathy, specifically. to get a raise—(He was working as an actor on a cable show, and was already extremely well-paid.)

Let us assume he is guilty, which is very likely. How did he react when the mounting evidence indicated that he was lying. He double-downed on his lies. He asserted that he was telling the truth “from day one.” As a “man of faith” he claims that he could not be lying. He wouldn’t be “his mother’s son” if he were not telling the truth.

How can someone lie so shamelessly?

When I was an elementary school student in the 1950s, I remember what was then a familiar story, albeit an apocryphal one: George Washington and the Cherry Tree. The young Washington received a gift of a hatchet from his father when the former was six years old. George used it to take  a few swings at one of his father’s cherry trees. "Who did this," asked his angry father. The future president famously responded “I cannot tell a lie—I did it!" His father embraced him, informing him that telling the truth was worth a thousand cherry trees.

Yes, this anecdote never happened, but that’s not the point. The lesson to be learned was that telling the truth is essential. “Truth is relative, and, by the way, You’re special!” was not part of the 1950s elementary school curriculum.

My wife who emigrated from India in 1972, learned similar lessons at school. She remembers a little anecdote about a guru. A woman wanted her son to stop eating sweets; he wouldn’t listen to her, and continued to eat sweets on the sly. So she brought him to a guru. “Swami, please tell my son to stop eating sweets—it is ruining his health." The swami was silent. The mother couldn’t believe the silence ringing in her ears. At last the guru told her to return with her son in a week. When they returned, the guru lost no time in telling the son not to eat sweets. "Thank you, Swami” the mother replied. “But why were you silent last week?” “I had to give up sweets first. A man of truth must practice what he preaches."

It’s a kid’s story, true, but it contains a lesson kids must learn if they are to become non-narcissistic adults: develop a moral compass that always points to integrity. Tell the truth, even if it puts you at a disadvantage. It’s not all about you!

2.

A German professor once said to our class, “Viele im Kleinen haben gedacht was Hitler im Grossen gedacht hatte.” (Many (in Germany) thought in lower-case what Hitler in upper-case thought.”  I never forgot that sentence. Big Liars can infect us and lead us over the precipice. It happened before.

Perhaps Smollett can be viewed as one of those little liars, a chemical drip precipitated into reality by the pernicious solution concocted by the Big Liar at the top. 

Can you imagine what boy-Trump would have replied to his father? “Daddy, what’s cherry tree? What’s a hatchet?” Pressed further,  he would surely have blamed it on a bad black boy named Obama.

Our current president has reportedly told over two thousand lies since he’s been in office--a dismal precedent. How many people have descended into rodents blissfully following the Pied Piper of Queens? Many, I’m afraid.

Trump is without a doubt a malignant narcissist. Good for him is what serves him; Evil for him is what opposes him—that is, Morality. How long can this go on? Can we afford to wait until it’s raining smolletts? Where will Truth take shelter then?

 Our house is on fire! Where can Truth take shelter now?

Among senators; among members of Congress; among smolletts; beside our President? We are Truth’s ambassadors! We cannot tell a lie! Yeah, right.

The Failed Moccasin Test of Ilhan Omar

I begin with a joke. 

First, a few words about the context in which the joke arose. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he wasted no time in advancing his heinous persecution of Jews. He initiated a boycott of Jewish businesses shortly after he became chancellor; the notorious Nuremberg laws, partially inspired by persecution of blacks in the Jim Crow American South, soon followed. Jews were being fired everywhere in Germany, "Deutschland erwache, Juda verrecke" was the mantra. (Roughly translated as “Awake, Germany, Jewry die!”). The persecution, horrible as it was, was mild compared to what came later. In the early years of Hitler’s Germany, Jews were still permitted to participate in their cultural institutions. (Kristallnacht came five years later, in 1938).

Now we’re ready to tell a very sad joke. Somewhere in Germany, a Jewish man named Daniel saw his friend, Samuel,  reading a newspaper in the park. It turned out to be a copy of der völkische Beobachter, the infamous Nazi daily edited by Alfred Rosenberg, who was executed by the Allies in 1946. “Samuel, why are you reading that Nazi rag?” Samuel replied, “When I read a Jewish newspaper, I get depressed. I read about firings, confiscation of property,etc.; each edition contains articles about the increasing humiliations of our people. When I read the Nazi paper, however, I learn that we control the world!”

Versions of this joke, alas! are still with us. The recent statements of Ilhan Omar, one of only two Muslim women in Congress, are but one example. What is the reason behind America’s support of Israel? “It’s all about Benjamins, baby!”—Money, she believes, has "hypnotized" the American people into support for Israel. She even hinted that Jewish support of Israel among Americans signified primary allegiance to a foreign power. Her comments were correctly judged to be “anti-Semitic tropes,” for which she has apologized.

I wish that was the end of it, but it isn’t. I must admit that I’m getting nervous. I am liberal in my political views; what’s making me uncomfortable is what appears to me to be a rising  unfair criticism of Israel by fellow liberals. There are many examples. A recent Op-ed article in the New York Times informed readers that it’s time to take Israel to task for its treatment of Palestinians. Marc Lamont Hill, a good man, gave a talk at the United Nations that severely criticized Israel. (He ended his talk advocating one country, Palestine, from the Jordan River to the sea. If you’re a supporter of Israel, you know what that means—the end of Israel).

No reasonable person, I think, would give Israel an A for its treatment of Palestinians. Daniel Barenboim, for instance, has spoken eloquently about this issue. He is not, however, advocating for the end of Israel as a Jewish state, which would occur if many critics of Israel got their way.

In my opinion, critics of Israel who do not support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state have failed what I call “The Moccasin Test". They might have walked a mile in Palestinian moccasins, but are apparently unable to walk an inch in Jewish ones. No matter what your political affiliation is, I invite you now to "change moccasins" and walk with me a while.

Judaism is, of course, a major world religion; Jewish culture has had a culturally positive influence way beyond the number of Jews worldwide. (Where would Broadway be without Jews?)

There are about a billion Muslims in the world; there are about a billion Christians as well. Astonishingly, there are only about eighteen million Jews in the world. There are many states with a Muslim or with a Christian majority, but only one Jewish state, Israel. Israel’s area is only a tiny fraction of the areas in which Muslims are the majority.

Not only for cultural reasons, but due to the horrible history of anti-Semitism in the past, it is imperative and fair that there be a Jewish state, both as a source of pride and as a refuge for Jews all over the world. (For instance, if anti-Semitism becomes toxic in a country, the Jewish state will accept Jewish refugees as citizens. (I recently watched on French TV a special on rising anti-Semitism in France; about 20,000 Jews have made the Aliyah journey back to their ancient homeland because they no longer felt safe in France—France has about 800,000 Jews).

Granted, the necessity for a Jewish state entails some restriction on Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. But non-Jews in Israel can attend institutions of higher learning, can serve in the Knesset, and are free to celebrate their religion, etc. (The situation is admittedly far from perfect).

Much of the criticism of Israel, however, is decidedly unfair. Churches and mosques, for instance, are protected in Israel; there is freedom of worship. In contrast, churches, not to mention synagogues, are under siege in many Muslim countries of the Middle East. There was once, for instance, a thriving Jewish community in Iraq—can anyone dare assert that it would be safe for  Jews to live in Iraq or Iran today?

Any impartial person—a disappearing breed—should understand why a Jewish state is a necessity. Walking even a half mile in Jewish moccasins should be enough to convince anyone why this is so.

Politicians must be judged, just like everyone else, that is, by how well they adhere to a form of the Golden Rule. Accepting the necessity of a Jewish state thus does not shield Israel from criticism regarding the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. (There is no Jewish equivalent, however, to form a Jewish version of the caliphate; even the most fanatic settlers have no territorial ambitions beyond Judea and Samaria, the West Bank).

If you comprehend the necessity of a Jewish state, you understand why the widespread Palestinian demand that Palestinians who were expelled from Israel during wars cannot be allowed to return. Israel considers this position to be non-negotiable; rightly so, in my opinion. Obviously, if Muslims became the majority in Israel, the Jewish state would cease to exist. Wars have consequences!

(Note: the notorious BDS or Boycott Israel movement--especially notorious if you're wearing Jewish moccasins, advocates "...promoting the right  of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194").

I fear that many liberals, and many others as well, view Israel as being anti-democratic. If you walk even an inch in Jewish moccasins, you realize that Israel is by far the most democratic nation in the region. Yes, Ilhan Omar has said some “anti-Semitic” tropes, which is bad enough, but the criticism of Israel—as a neo-colonialist state, for instance--is much more insidious and widespread among those without a sense of history.

Unfair criticism of Israel is but one example for the necessity of  periodically “switching moccasins.” It should be common practice, but, in an increasingly polarized world, it isn’t. Will it ever be?

A Poet in Chile (and Argentina)

Note: My wife and I participated in a Go Ahead Tours group excursion to Chile and Argentina from January 3 to January 17, 2019. What follows is my account of this journey. It consists of external and internal observations; mind is like a Möbius strip, a configuration in which the outer and inner aspects are one and the same. In other words, what I see often begins a process of thinking and feeling that sometimes leads to a culmination of that process, a poem. Nine poems are interwoven into this inner/outer travelogue.

We left a day before the tour started. After an uneventful flight to Santiago de Chile, the country’s capital, we took the convenient ground transportation to our hotel, located in a high-end section of the city. The location was good, near a large park; the disadvantage is that most of the points of interest are located about a half-hour’s taxi ride from the hotel. We made a rather bad choice for our first visit, a starred attraction in our guide book: The Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center. We thought it contained a museum, but it only offered a few exhibits of folk art. It is situated by the Catholic University of Chile, an important center of higher education. The cultural center offers many theatrical performances, one of which we were interested in attending, a performance of (Asian) Indian classical music and dance, but the logistics of getting there and back proved to be too difficult. We had a nice lunch, though; vegetarian empanadas. While we ate, we watched teenagers perform what is apparently the latest local dance craze. It consists of very rapid angular movements to popular music. Like line dancing, it is not danced with a partner; it is, as it were, a spot dance, since everyone basically remains in the same spot. It is a street-artsy form of exercise; most of the kids were really good.

We had a much better time the next day when we visited an unstarred attraction in our guidebook: El Museo Chileno de Arte Precolumbino, which contains an exhibit of artworks from Mexico to Patagonia during the long pre-conquistador period. What a different view of the world stared back at us from the many statues we saw! Their expressions seem half human, and half completely other.These beings were thought to control human destiny, to which they seem to be, sometimes, as concerned for human welfare as a supernova. They represent dangerous forces that were sometimes brutally cruel while at the same time assuming the very beautiful forms the prehistoric artists gave them. The only way to survive, it was thought, in a very precarious world where death, illness and suffering were frequent unwelcome guests, was to try to propitiate them.  After a visit to this museum one begins to understand the existential anxiety which propelled the Aztecs’ obsession for human sacrifice.

After lunch, we began a guided tour of the city, a superficial and hurried one, but for tourists like Nirmala and me, who know very little about Chile, enjoyable nevertheless. We climbed the Saint Lucia Hill, the site where Santiago was founded in 1541 by Pedro de Valdivia. The top afforded a nice mirador of the city. We attempted to look at the view with sixteenth-century eyes; however, only the twenty-first century stared back. Santiago is full of high-rise commercial buildings. The “eyes” of the buildings, the glistening office windows, reminded me of some of the indifferent stares of the pre-columbian gods. Scary, but much less scary, since one can look beyond them; they can be ignored.

The next day we were off to Valparaiso, a port city about a hundred kilometers to the west of Santiago. It is smaller and hilly; it has seen better days. Once a thriving port, the creation of the Panama Canal in 1914, obviating the need for a port many kilometers to the south, was a devastating blow.We ascended by funicular to a quaint area that is a Unesco Heritage site. Brightly colored two story-houses were everywhere on the hilly streets; many of the walls covered with interesting murals:

There were also many stray dogs. It reminded me of the many stray dogs we’ve encountered in Chennai, (Madras), India, during our many visit there over the years. On one of the streets in Valparaiso, I witnessed something that impressed me. A homeless woman turned a corner and presented a scrap of food to one of the stray dogs. I got the impression that the dog and the dogged were well acquainted. Her expression, before encountering the dog, was blank. Suddenly she was looking at the dog with an expression of great affection. She was obviously mentally ill; I imagine that she would like human contact, as we all do, but her illness and low status precluded the enjoyment of human society. Her clothes, now quite raggedy and dirty, gave a hint of a well-to-do yet lost social status. I imagined that somehow she had a relationship with a stray dog in India as well; on the bus ride back to Santiago I wrote the following haiku:

One in Chennai, another stray

dog in Valparaiso,

Chile. I’m making friends—at last!

A coincidence: on the way back to the funicular, I saw this:

                                    "I'd rather be a dog"          

It reminded me of what a friend, shocked by human brutality and delighted by canine affection for humans, told me long ago: “The dog is the perfect human being”.  He had a point, maybe; I am still, however, delighted that blind fate has fashioned me into a human being.

Day four of our trip began early; we had to leave around 2 a.m. to catch a flight to Punta Arenas, the southernmost major urban area in Chile. The airport was chaotic; we were traveling during peak season. Our guide, Jorge, however, had everything under control and we reached our destination without difficulty.

Punta Arenas has a population close to 130,000; it began, like Georgia in what was to become the United States, as a penal colony. It is an important base for Chilean access to Antarctica. The wind-swept town reminded me of ones we had visited in Alaska. From our hotel, we could see the Straits of Magellan, which is the many kilometers long connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Named after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the Straits and the connecting oceans moderate the climate of the town: in winter the temperature hovers around freezing, while in the summer, the season during which we visited, the temperature highs are in the 50s.

One of the highlights of our trip occurred here, a visit to the Isla Magdalena Penguin colony. The island is accessible by a small boat. The tourist-friendly hostess told me that I looked sexy in my life jacket. (Pour la première fois de ma vie, I said to myself.  She was, of course, being ironic—Hopefully not too ironic).

As we approached the island, it looked so desolate that I imagined myself as a passenger on the little boat heading for The Isle of The Dead in the famous painting by Arnold Böcklin. The island, however, is very much full of avian life: hundreds of nesting Magellan penguins, along with some nesting cormorants, were everywhere. The penguins were protected from too close contact with the most dangerous species in the world; we circumvented the island, separated from their strange stares by a small fence. It was an unforgettable experience. The Magellan penguins, a mid-sized example of the species, grow to about two and half feet and weigh about 15 lbs or so. Their nesting season begins around September; they lay their eggs in October, which hatch in December. Penguins mate for life; they re-hook up with each other after a year or so of fending for themselves. Both male and female share incubation duties and subsequent shared duties in raising their chicks. They are among the most unmusical birds on the planet. They are able, however, to identify the call of their mates, so each call has to be distinct. It is hard for us to imagine a female being attracted to the cacophonous calls of her mate; one could as easily imagine her falling in love with a foghorn. It reminds me of James Thurber’s response to a critic who asked him why his cartoon women were so unattractive. They’re attractive to my cartoon men, he replied. Nature knows what she’s doing.

The life of penguins is not easy. They make a little burrow where the female lays two eggs. After they hatch, the parents take turns on a journey for food; a journey from which they might not return. In the meantime, the stay-at-home parent stands guard by the nest. The penguins have many predators. Life is very precarious in nature, no doubt about that. I stared into the eyes of many fledglings. Their expressions were different form the ones depicted on statues of pre-columbian gods. There was no cruelty here; also no source of grandeur; no sense of self. The little stones that were their eyes seemed to be there simply to relay to their little brain whether the curious eyes belonging to me posed any threat. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as Tennyson so beautifully put it. All her creatures, however, are perfectly contained in her; it is only we humans who are able to ascend to the angels and descend to the devils. (Is climate change affecting the survival of these birds? Yes, indeed).

Tennyson was right

How irreverent are soles!

What once was an ant suddenly

is not. Tennis shoes aren’t Jains.

If I would step between their hills,

would doodlebugs be grateful? Ha!

Eat what falls into your jaws;

to a green pinhead of God

lift a beetle between fasts,

beautiful praying mantis!

A bug moving across a chyron

cannot grasp the latest carnage;

it crawls on. I brush it aside.

The next day, January 10, we were off on a bus ride to our next  destination. On the way, we stopped at an estancia, a ranch on which sheep are raised. We witnessed a sheep-shearing; it was interesting, but things were hardly as bucolic as depicted in the sheep-shearing festival in the third act of Shakespeare’s Tempest. After the poor thing was sheared, it reminded me of an enlarged photo of a newborn hamster. At least they didn’t kill it!—which, by the way, they more than sometimes do.

A few hours later, we reached Puerto Natalis, a rather unimpressive little town whose claim to fame is its proximity to the Torres del Paine National Park, which we visited in the afternoon.

Visiting the park was another unforgettable experience. Its large area contains many lakes, each a different color depending on the source of the water and the type of algae present. Wildlife was fairly abundant. The central attraction of the park is the towering peaks of Los Cuernos del Paine. Its base is ancient, but the peak is only about 12 million years old, barely out of the toddler stage of a mountain’s lifespan. (The Andes are 80 million years old). The huge granite slabs, carved by glaciers into their present form, reminded me of Titan-sized versions of the stone tablets of the Decalogue.

I stood in awe before them. Standing before this majestic scene, one is aware of what Longinus had in mind when he wrote his famous treatise over two thousand years ago: the only appropriate word for such experiences is, indeed, sublime.

After I “came down” from the heights, I thought, curiously, of Saint Bernard—at least I think it was Saint Bernard. I remember reading about a saint who had to be led across the Alps by an assistant. He kept his eyes closed—he didn’t want the grandeur of the outer world to challenge the grandeur of his inner world, the world of God. Odd. My Möbius mind informed me that the inner and outer must be kept wisely in balance, since they are actually one and the same. Love of the world, properly understood, not only doesn’t distract us from love of fellow human beings, it increases our resolve to do better.

Saint Bernard

He dealt in mirages, metaphors,

imaginary things, miracles;

his mind painted faces on stones.

He ignored what was under his nose,

so he crossed the Alps with his eyes closed.

Otherwise he’d be distracted; otherwise, he’d see.

(Coirón, crabgrass, dandelions,

vetches, clover and a yellow rose)

Wherever we look, whatever we see,

(their spirit full fills me, not his)

inside and outside encompasses all—

(Mind’s eyebrows are cirrus clouds;

mind’s cheeks are giant red stars)—

Why do we suffer? Why are we here?

God passes God nectar and laughs.

The next day consisted mainly of a very long bus ride to El Carafate, a town in Argentina. As we passed the Argentine border, we stopped at a shrine of an Argentine (sort-of) saint, El Gauchito Gil. He was apparently an Argentine Robin Hood, a champion of the common folk, for which he was executed. Miracles allegedly followed, and still follow. Jorge gave each one of us a card with a drawing of Gil on one side, and a request for intercession on the back. Here is the prayer on the back of the glossy, wallet-sized card:

¡OH! GAUCHITO GIL

Te ruego humildemente

se cumpla por intermedio

ante Dios, el milagro

que te pido; y te prometa

que cumpliré mi promessa,

brindándote mi fiel

agradecimiento y

demostación de Fe,

en Dios y en vos,

GAUCHITO GIL

Amén

The offerings at the shrine consisted mainly of  cans of beer, apparently typical offerings for this folksy saint.

I like to watch news in Spanish when I am in Baltimore. The half hour Noticias is followed by a silly telenovela entitled La Rosa de Guadalupe. It depicts young people who get themselves into desperate circumstances—usually, you guessed it, through inappropriate sexual encounters. When all hope is apparently lost, a white rose descends, accompanied by a  tinsely shower and tinsely music. Thus begins the intervention of the diva ex machina, the Virgin of Guadalupe, who will resolve whatever mess the hapless young folk have gotten themselves into, all in time for the final commercial. Why not make an offshoot of this nonsense, a telenovela called La Cerveza de Gauchito Gil? Instead of a rose, cans of beer would fall into the hands of the afflicted. And if Gauchito Gil failed to deliver, at least they’d be able to drown out their sorrows before the final commercial.

OK, let’s get serious. While riding on the bus, I stared at the endless fields of coirón, the pale yellow grass of the Patagonian steppe; breaking the monotony of the grass were many carafate bushes. I was spotting wildlife—guanacos, flamingos, condors and, of course, sheep. I saw in the distance some creature or other and turned to my wife, who, as I discovered, was asleep on the seat beside me. Her mouth was half-open and her eyes, eerily, were slightly open as well. For a moment she seemed to be dead, thus anticipating the most traumatic event of my life, if I’m not lucky enough to go first. (The major theme of poets is said to be love and death, which I have found out to be quite true).

For my dear and mortal wife

I don’t mind dying (O yes you do)

but hers—I couldn’t bear it!

(True)--Why am I soft as a doughnut?

Why is faith thin as a robin egg’s shell?

Not that I envy a  boulder’s palm

whose handshake I’ll feel soon enough.

Pale-yellow grass on an Argentine pampa

I’d be; beneath the surface of Enceladus,

frozen slush I’d be without her—Once

the marriage bed is empty, what cover

shall warm me this side of cremation,

what melts metaphorical snow?

What melts metaphorical snow? Figuring this out is one of the major problems of life, no? Well, Nirmala awoke and I was back in the middle of life. As we rode along, another poem came to me, a Buddhist poem. Contrary to what people think, Buddha didn’t recommend that one should eliminate all desires, just egotistic desire, cravings characterized by the three impediments to wisdom, namely, greed, hate and delusion. It is folly not to accept life as it is; to demand from it more than it is able to give. Even worse is the folly of demanding that we be something which we are not.  This is the subject of the following little poem. (Note “Nothing” refers to “Sunyatta” the void in which pure consciousness abides, the source of wisdom and peace).

“Enough isn’t enough”—this is desire.

I must be enough—desire again.

Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

Enough--the fulfillment of Zen.

A bit tired from the bus trip, we finally arrived at El Carafate. Of the three towns we visited in Patagonia, this one is the most lively, largely due to tourism. We had a good vegetarian meal at a restaurant called Pura Vida.

The next day we visited the largest national park of Argentina, El Parque Nacional de los Glacieres. The park contains two large lakes, Lake Argentino and Lake Lake Viedma. We stopped at Lake Argentino, surrounded by subpolar forests, mountains and inhabited by an abundance of wildlife. A bit later we arrived at the southern face of Lake Argentino, which affords spectacular views of the Perito Moreno Glacier. The height of the glacier is much less than the height of the glaciers we saw in Alaska: it rises only about 200 ft, and, we were told, extends about 500 ft below the surface of the lake. What really impresses is the size of the glacier; seen from above, it extends to the horizon as far as the eye can see,

Suddenly, my mind’s eye saw rows of the terracotta soldiers which compose the posthumous army of the third century B.C.E. Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Looking down from a balcony from the Xian museum which houses the sculptures, one is impressed by long rows of this clay army, which extends into the distance in much the same way as the glacier, albeit on a much smaller scale. Perhaps the icy irregularities at the top of the glacier reminded me of the soldiers’ helmets. I soon wrote the following haiku:

The Perito Moreno Glacier

Frozen in attention,

white-capped Xian solders—One faints;

distant sounds of thunder

Soon we were on a plane again, this time to Buenas Aires, a fascinating  city, where we spent two nights. After that, many in our group flew back home. Not us: Nirmala and I, along with several others, booked an extension to Iguazú Falls, which proved to be a wise choice. On the two hour flight to Iguazú Falls, which is located near the borders of Brazil and of Paraguay, we experienced some turbulence, which led me to write the following poem:

Turbulence

We gallop through clouds—Suddenly,

Pegasus bucks—We rise, we fall;

no getting off this obstreperous steed

until we reach Iguazú Falls.

Whoa, Bronco, whoa! Coward’s no cowboy;

panic has no reins to quiet giddy hooves—

Buck on. Doubt turned green professes still-

things unseen: Faith still believes in Ground!

Ground did indeed arrive an hour later. We were now in a subtropical time zone; it was humid, it was hot. Shortly after our arrival, we took a little walking tour through some jungle, which proved to be an excellent way to muddy up our shoes.

The Falls, which we visited the following day provided yet another unforgettable experience. Yes, it was sublime, but it was also cosmic: I think that there are few spots on Earth where one comes into such close contact with the raw power of nature. 

We took a little train ride to the beginning of a suspended walkway which led to the falls. The panoramic views from the walkway were nothing short of astounding. As we approached the  falls, we all became Keats’s Cortez, as it were, “silent before a peak in Darien”.

Nature can be very small. For instance, there are about  1 x 10²³

molecules in a teaspoon of water. How many trillions more in the human body, a large proportion of which consists of water! The amount of water molecules in the churning mass before us—a truly unfathomable amount!

I felt as if I had been surrounded by unearthly forces of truly cosmic proportion. The people on the walkway became, as it were, tiny (relatively speaking) stars trying to assert themselves in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy many light-years away from Earth.

The majestic Falls, however, became the source of the silliest poem I wrote on the journey, a poem of comic exaggeration:

Iguazú Falls

Pace, Lewis Carroll

If seven drunks with seven jugs

swigged for seven years,

ya think they’d ever drink it up?

They would if it were beer

The Falls gave rise to one of my more serious poems as well. At the site of a churning immensity called The Devil’s Throat—we were just a few feet away from the gurgling abyss—our local guide, Chino, informed us that if anyone leaped into the water at this point, there would be no chance of survival. I asked him how often this occurs—A few times a year, he told me.

How sad. Suicide visited my family on one occasion; I know more than a bit about its devastating impact on the living.  As a physician, I also came into contact with several desperate patients during my long career. A healthy life, as mentioned previously, is a balance between the mind and what the mind sees. When one is locked in an inner world full of demons, the psychic pain can be almost unbearable.

The healthy way to transcend the cravings of the ego is through acts of loving kindness and insight into the interconnectedness of all things. I thought of the lines by the Tang-dynasty poet, Li Po: We sit together, the mountain and me,/Until only the mountain remains.

The path of love and wisdom, as everyone of us knows, isn’t easy. Suicide, which is most often impulsive, is the easy—tragically easy-- way to leave the cravings of the ego behind—(No criticism of those who commit suicide implied! Mental illness is a disease, not a fault).

So many words to introduce a haiku I wrote after experiencing The Iguazú Falls!

Suicide, Iguazú Falls

What an easy way to

become one with the entire world!

My way is harder

We have thus come to an end of this inward-outward journey through Chile and Argentina. Comments welcome!

Thanks to Go Ahead Tours for arranging this trip; thanks to Jorge Monferini, our excellent cicerone; thanks goes to our fellow travelers and to all readers of this account as well!

Dorsett is a retired pediatrician and a widely published poet.

A Review of J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls"

“An Inspector Calls,” by J.B. Priestley, directed by Stephen Delay, part of the 2018-1019 repertoire of the Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C., was an enjoyable theatrical experience. The play was once a war horse that galloped across the world’s stages after its premiere—in The Soviet Union no less—in 1945. Why beat a near-dead horse? I’m not completely sure, but I'm grateful that the director chose to revive it—There is obviously life in the old steed yet.

It is a didactic play, true, but quite an innovative and entertaining one, nevertheless.  We know where Priestley’s sympathies lie as the unrepentant capitalist, Mr. Birling, says the following lines at the beginning of the play: "The way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everyone else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive--community and all that nonsense." Priestley, like the best of us in every generation, was undoubtedly one of those "cranks". 

"Love yourself and cheat your neighbor," a travesty of The Golden Rule, is still the unspoken mantra of many, 73 years after the play was written. Thus this idea play has still alas! a very contemporary message.

The mise-en-scene is quite impressive. The stage presents a large Victorian house on shaky foundations. The house reminded me of models on a train-set board lovingly erected by my father every Christmas when I was a kid. Its doll-house-like proportions in this production affords a view only of a dining room table around which the wealthy family gathers to celebrate the engagement of Birling's daughter to a younger version of himself, a promising little Koch, expected to exploit for years to come, expected to play dirty with a pristine conscience in the vacuous spirit of his soon-to-be father-in-law.

In the first scene, after the house opens into two equal wings, we find the family seated around a dining room table. The cramped space symbolizes the cramped spiritual life of the inhabitants.

Then the inspector calls, a police inspector named Goole, no less.  A young woman has poisoned herself with disinfectant, symbolizing the moral filth of the upper class members who are, as we shall see, responsible for her death. The family asks the inspector what the young girl’s death has to do with them?  Apparently plenty.

Each family member discovers during the course of the play that their consciences are as diaphanously clear as a pile of Newcastle coal. They killed her as assuredly as the measles virus killed countless numbers of Indians during the Spanish conquest of South America. The virus in this case is that murderously infectious vector of the upper class, namely, exploitation of the poor. (The patriarch fired her because she wanted an increase in wages; his wife had her fired from her subsequent employment for a frivolous reason; the fiancé abused her sexually; Birling's son impregnates her; the matriarch refuses to help her  because she had become “a fallen woman.”

It is a bit too much; the author wants to demonstrate that most members of the upper class are guilty, a defensible position that comes across dramatically as an ineffective exaggeration. That’s not all: the reason she approaches the matriarch for help is that the latter's impecunious son has been stealing from his father in order to support her. The young girl is just too pure to accept stolen money—Oh, brother!

It reminds me of a wonderful, unintended Zen moment from a Marx Brothers film, A Night at the Opera. The bad guy is beating some poor schlep. Groucho stops him with the following words, “Hey, you big bully, why are you picking on that little bully?”

We’re all bullies; nobody’s innocent. What makes one bully a little one is simply due to a lack of power. That the oppressed young girl, born with mud in her mouth while the others eat off a silver spoon, is the only one in the entire play who is as innocent as a canary in coal mine, strikes us as being gratuitously and undramatically ideological. In real life she would most likely be less concerned with the means rather than with the end, namely, survival. Who could blame her? J.B. Priestley perhaps.Truth is, we are all guilty, but the powerful are a good deal more guilty than the powerless “little bullies”; the former alone have the means to be really mean.

In this age of gross inequality, however, Priestley's assessment of society is more apropos than ever. 

It is difficult to read the newspapers these days without getting depressed. To get myself out of the pit into which the world’s abuses have thrown me, I’ve read some of the books by Steven Pinsker, who claims that the world is getting better, and provides convincing charts to prove it. One need only think of the many programs that combat inequality which Great Britain has promulgated in the years since An Inspector Calls was written. Still… 

The arc of justice may eventually lead to a pot of gold--but does it have to be so long; does it have to pass over such desperate landscapes in order to reach its happy goal?

A metaphor taken from physics consoles. According to a theory, there was  an equal amount of matter and antimatter at the time of creation. Each category annihilated the other. A small amount of matter, which comprises our entire cosmos today, remained, since it took more time to turn into matter and thus escaped destruction.This might be a good metaphor for human history. In each generation, evil and good are present in almost equal amounts; however, in each generation, after much suffering and destruction, a small amount of good prevails.

Thus, in every generation “matter” inspectors visit and, with a message of “Love your neighbor” examine our consciences and inspire us to do better. Yet every generation receives visits, in almost equal measure, from antimatter inspectors whose message is “Gold loves you just the way you are.” According to Pinsker and his convincing charts, the good inspectors predominate, if ever so slightly.

In this view, genesis occurs with every generation anew. This is why the family members, after discovering that the inspector was a phantom, revert to their greedy ways. The only ones who have “learned their lesson”, the bride and her brother, are the surviving elements of “matter," the unannihilated remnant of good which will make the next generation better. Hope for the future? Perhaps.

Then comes Priestley’s theatrical surprise. There is an inspector after all, and he will call on the family shortly. Everyone, a new generation of the same characters,  will have to confront their antimatter again—a profound message presented with a theatrical tour de force.

The acting and directing were superb. Kudus to Shakespeare Theater for reviving this interesting play!

R.I.P. Vimala Arjun (1930-2018)

Today, December 10, 2018, we got a call at 4:14 a.m. We knew what it was about. My sister-in-law, Vimala Arjun, passed away in Chennai, India.We had talked with her daughter, Vidya, on the evening of December 9^th. Vimala’s skin had become mottled. I asked if her extremities were cold; they were. She was having excess mucus in her throat and had difficulty breathing. These are all signs of impending death. We advised against tube feeding; Just keep her comfortable, we said; no need to try to feed her if she is unable to eat; just keep her lips moist, etc.

It was not an easy death. She had been struggling against the inevitable for months. Vimala’s mind was sharp until the very end. For instance, she knew when my birthday was (Oct. 9^th) and had her daughter call me this year so she could wish me a happy birthday. This was yet another example of her phenomenal memory, since I am an in-law, one of many relatives in a large family and a large circle of friends and acquaintances. Even toward the end, when her speech became slurred, her mentation had not lost its vigor.

Her body had not been as lucky. She was crippled by scoliosis and severe kyphosis. Her back was so bent that she could hardly walk; she was confined to her flat for the last few years of her life. We called her frequently; she never complained, and always gave us news about close and distant relatives, and news about the successes of past students as well. (Vimala had been a professor of English literature and department head at Ethiraj College in Chennai for many years).

My first memory of Vimala occurred before I had met her. My wife Nirmala and I, both pediatric residents in New York City, were in a relationship, which led to marriage after a two year courtship, in 1974. I remember thinking at the time that Nirmala had a sister who was so old—42! I can’t image what twenty-somethings must think of me now that I’ve become over thirty years older than Vimala was then! O yes I can.

After our residency, we traveled to India as a newly married couple. It was my first of many visits; Nirmala hadn’t been home for about five years. At that time, Vimala’s husband, Krishnarjun, was working for the Reserve Bank of India; they lived in a flat in a compound of flats for bank employees in Kilpauk, Madras—the city hadn’t been renamed Chennai yet. When we entered the flat, we had become, as it were, gods. Vimala had us sit at the center of the living room; she placed a mala, a garland of bright orange flowers around each of our necks. Two large valukkus, ceremonial lamps, had been lit. The bowls of the lamps, filled with oil, had places for several cotton wicks. While we sat on the floor, bathed in a warm glow from the valukku fire, our ears were full filled with carnatic, that is, classical South Indian religious music. It was an unforgettable experience.

Vimala, by the way, had musical talent. She was studying singing before her father’s unexpected death, in 1950, changed everything. I heard her sing a few times; she had a very sweet voice and always sang on key. I fondly recall discussing carnatic music on several occasions with her.

2. From Roshen To Vidya

The next day we had another unforgettable experience, a far less pleasant one. Vimala’s daughter, Roshen, (like Madras, she had not been renamed yet either—she is now called Vidya), had been riding around the compound courtyard on a bike. Vimala came to the courtyard soon after, begging Roshen to stop. Roshen, unfortunately had a severe form of heart disease. Nirmala and I noticed that she was very much out of breath after a few laps around the courtyard. Her lips had turned blue; her fingertips had turned blue as well.

Vimala, by far the most traditionally religious person of the family, had consulted a guru who advised her to change Roshen’s name. Nirmala had chosen Roshen as a name for her niece; Vidya, which means wisdom, however, is a lovely name, no doubt about that. I will call her by that name from now on.

Vidya had had a test a few years earlier to determine the nature of her cardiac disease. The procedure, called a cardiac catheterization, entailed the injection of an iodine-based dye into her blood stream, so that her vessels could be better visualized on X-ray. Vidya, however, suffered a near-fatal allergic reaction to the dye and the procedure had to be aborted. Only a partial video was available. This study was sent to the famous cardiologist, Dr. DeBakey, in Texas. He reported that she most likely had a diagnosis called transposition of the great vessels; he believed that the condition was now inoperable. There was nothing to do but await the inevitable.

Nirmala and I weren’t ready to accept this devastating news; perhaps something could be done. When we returned to the United States, Nirmala contacted cardiologists at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, where Nirmala worked as a pediatrician. She came into contact with a young cardiac surgeon there, whose name was Dr. Griepp. He reviewed the study, which we had brought along with us. He told us that the diagnosis was not transposition, bur a condition called tetralogy of Fallot. (His diagnosis, by the way, proved to be the correct one). He believed an operation could save her, and was willing to do it for free!  Those were the days—such largesse would be impossible today!

Nirmala and I were very pleased—as was Vimala, when we informed her. It was in the fall of 1977 when Vidya and her mother arrived in New York.  An aside: when we left the airport, Vimala noticed a billboard advertisement for drumsticks.”They have drumsticks here!” the vegetarian Vimala beamed. East is East and West is West, I thought, amused, for in India a drumstick is a yummy-gummy  vegetable, very different from the disembodied thigh of a dead bird!

The operation was a complete success! Helping to arrange for Vidya’s surgery was one of the three best things I’ve ever done. The first was marrying Nirmala, the second was adopting our son, Philip. The real hero of all this is, of course, Dr. Griepp, without whose help Vidya would not be alive today, nor would her lovely daughter, Shrada, a psychologist, ever have been born.

3. The Demise of the Family Matriarch

Vimala lived for over thirty years post retirement; her mind, as mentioned previously, remained sharp until the very end. But her last few months were difficult. It made me think of the poem Heinrich Heine wrote on this deathbed, the last stanza of which, in my translation, follows:

You wring your lovely hands so sadly.

O be consoled! It is our fate,

Our human fate, what’s good and great

And lovely ends—and ends badly.

Vimala’s eldest daughter, Sudha, did a fantastic job caring for her mother. She lived with her, slept with her, and did everything she could to ease her suffering. Vidya, of course, was a significant presence as well.

Vidya, who was with her when she died, reports that Vimala, propped up so that gravity could help her with the secretions that had gathered in her throat as she died, suddenly and very quietly simply stopped breathing. This reminded me of a poem by Emily Dickinson, The Last Night She Lived, perhaps the best poem about dying ever written. Here is how it ends:

She mentioned, and forgot—

Then lightly as a Reed

Bent to the Water, struggled scarce—

Consented, and was dead—

And we—We placed the Hair,

And drew the Head erect—

And then an awful leisure was—

Belief to regulate.

Nirmala and I have begun this process of belief-regulation through daily meditations. During one of these sessions, I “saw” Vimala, as it were, and asked her if death had changed any of her views of life. She smiled and “answered” me. “Before I had many views, some correct, some incorrect; now I have all views. You cannot imagine the peace I have now.”

I told this to Vidya, who had had a similar experience. Vimala had become the world; she informed us that there was no reason to mourn; but mourn we will.

Vimala leaves behind two daughters and two grandchildren, Shrada and Varun; her brother, Rajagopalan, and two sisters, my wife Nirmala and Romila, and a host of other relatives and friends, too numerous to mention.

Her passing and the experiences Vidya and I had afterward, remind me of a poem I had written years earlier, after her wonderful mother, Bhagirathy, died in 1994:

Last Words

Dear ones, now that I am gone,

Do not shed another tear;

Why grieve for one beyond harm?

Children, there’s no sorrow here.

There, at the moment of death,

Pain is what I left, not love:

The mother you knew on earth

Has become Mother above.

Where have I gone? Look and learn

From the silent sky: now (do

Not believe I’m in an urn,

Dears!) from the stars I greet you.

R.I.P. Vimala Arjun, you shall be missed.