@ sixes & sevens

words near to the heart

in·com·pas·sion·at·ed
adv. Rendered unable to show sympathy.

I was wallowing around trying to sort out my emotional state today when I struck upon the notion of the inability to expression compassion. I knew that uncompassionate, which my online Rogets defines as "not sympathetic," was in fact too harsh. I wanted instead to express the idea of someone who might want to show compassion but for whatever reason is incapable of doing so. "Incapacitate," with its definition of "To render powerless or motionless, as by inflicting severe injury," came closer to the idea of outside agency and not an innate lack of feeling. By blending incapacitated and compassion you end up with incompassionated. Voilà!

Truth told, it wasn't so much compassion that I first thought to address as sympathy: "the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble," which the definition then goes on to gloss as "fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration." [source] (Oh how I love the archaic and alliterative sound of "fellow feeling"!) But sympathy is complicated by a host of other less apt connotations.

I have a good and sympathetic friend to thank for capturing why this was all spinning around in my head in the first place. Explaining my mood in a chat, I put forward the following:

 me: true

5:45 PM i'm not one to ask for sympathy, and then when i don't get it i get pissed off

 [Friend]: lol

 talk about unspoken expectations

"Talk about unspoken expectations." Brilliant. And in only four words.

But here's the crux: If you've accustomed those around you to avoid lavishing unwanted (and to your mind, unwarranted) emotional attention on you, how can you fault them for being consistent when maybe a little emotional engagement might be welcome? Solve that and you can figure out how to correct the imbalance.

There are certainly those with little experience of expressing sympathy nor any inclination to do so, facing the prospect with fear and trepidation. Emotions are, after all, so messy. For these people it would be hard for me to insist upon it. Spurning their emotional engagement serves only to justify their distance.

Maybe incompassionate can be a transitive verb too: "to discourage others into concealing their sympathies." And apply to the object as well as the subject: "to render unreceptive to shows of sympathy."

love & magic

But the Too Perfect theory has larger meanings, too. It reminds us that, whatever the context, the empathetic interchange between minds is satisfying only when it is "dynamic", unfinished, unresolved. Friendships, flirtations, even love affairs depend, like magic tricks, on a constant exchange of incomplete but tantalizing information. We are always reducing the claim or raising the proof. The magician teaches us that romance lies in an unstable contest of minds that leaves us knowing it's a trick but not which one it is, and being impressed by the other person's ability to let the trickery go on. Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities. The trick is to renew the possibilities, to keep them from becoming schematized, to let them be imperfect, and the question between us is always "Who's the magician?" When we say that love is magic, we are telling a truth deeper, and more ambiguous, than we know.

Adam Gopnik, "The Real Work: Modern Magic and the Meaning of Life," New Yorker, March 17, 2008.

Six Degrees

Not that six degrees; the Fahrenheit kind. It was the temperature in Chicagoland when I woke up this morning.

On Monday night I learned that my mother-in-law, long bedridden and hospital bound in suburban Chicago from a stroke the year before, had died. Kiki and I had talked only a few days earlier about what we would do if the inevitable should happen. I offered to join her on the trip back home.

It's amazing how quickly you spring to action once decisions need to be made -- canceling work and social commitments, arranging for pet sitting, booking airline flights and ground transportation. Kiki and I coordinated much of it by cell phone, booking our JetBlue flights simultaneously online from New York and Boston.

It turned out to make the most sense for us to rendezvous at JFK and fly the Chicago leg together -- for moral support, among other things. And apart from the two-hour delay in taking off from New York, it went very smoothly. When we peered out the windows at O'Hare the wind was whipping the snow horizontally across the tarmac -- a wintry sandstorm, as it were. The broken baggage carousel at O'Hare forced the passengers to adopt a fireman's brigade to move the bags down the line; eventually it ground to life. When we left there was only one guy left waiting for his bags. He began his day in Birmingham, Alabama, and due to cancellations and missed flights had ended up flying to Memphis, Detroit, JFK, and finally Chicago. It looked as if his bags hadn't made the trip.

So we'll have a 'free' day today before the pomp and ritual of dying kick in Thursday.

anger management

I'm generally considered to be a pretty easygoing guy -- one who can tolerate a fairly high threshold of provocation. I'm usually content to watch silently as others fulminate; I try to adopt a neutral face. This has proved invaluable in New York City, where merely to react can be considered incitement.

When mildly annoyed I usually resort to withering sarcasm. If I'm lucky I think of the witty comeback while it's still timely. The phrase l'esprit de l'escalier has a particular resonance with me. Fortunately it's usually lost on my audience, but it satisfies a need to lash out.

Now and then I simply lapse into petty childishness, somewhere short of stomping my foot.

Yet true to my Scorpio nature (according to those who take stock in astrology), I can be quick to anger: At a certain point I tend to explode. Think of the stinger in the scorpion's tail. Fortunately the risk is mostly to me and to the inanimate world that surrounds me. 'Twas ever thus. I have this hazy recollection of throwing tantrums at the drop of a hat as a youngster. My brothers don't miss a chance to remind me of this, too.  Afterward I can normally credit it to frustration or humiliation, or sometimes to facing an irrational situation. (Ask me sometime about the "Bring Me The Toilet!" story.)

So it's hardly surprising that I ended up with a ugly-looking bruised knuckle this week. The provocation, predictably stupid, was a frustrating sequence of computer snags and program failures that would make most people throw up their hands. And that's exactly what I should have done, rather than rap my knuckles on the cover of a perfectly innocent hardcover book. I'm pleased to report the book is unharmed. Me, not so much.

Disturbing as it must be for those witnessing these infrequent outbursts, it's hard to equate them with more serious and chronic emotional problems. They are neither dangerous nor incapacitating. It certainly points up a profound personal shortcoming. To my credit, over time I have learned better to anticipate the frustrating, or humiliating, or simply irrational well ahead of that self-injurious breaking point, and in doing so steer the situation elsewhere. This is particularly worthwhile as I become slower to heal.
 

Another reason why I live here

The number before I thought to pull out my camera was "Carol of the Bells", which was lovelier than "Deck the Halls." But it gets the holiday message across anyway.

writing in the snow

K.E. ♥ C.V. ?
Originally uploaded by sixes & sevens

What is it about snow that so many write declarations of love in it? I was thinking about this during the most recent and first snowfall of the season, and it prompted me to take this photograph.

I wonder if it isn't in part its very impermanence. It's like shouting, but in an empty room. (All the more so when you consider the deadened hush that accompanies a good snowfall.) The snow is incredibly accommodating, giving the author an expansive blank canvas on which to inscribe the grandest and most extravagant of expressions. And yet these same sentiments are destined to be either silted in by new snow or melted by the next thaw. Saw what you may, you won't be held to it.

Not only that, it's more socially acceptable than graffiti.

 

Massachusetts license plates

Massachusetts antique auto
Originally uploaded by sixes & sevens

Earlier this week I was chatting with my friend and colleague Dan about my 1956 license plate photo documentation project. He made a bid for my doing Massachusetts next, a suggestion I was glad to take up: I have no particular order in mind for adding states to the collection. Besides, unlike some states Massachusetts actually had interesting plates in 1956.

The decision was made easier when Dan had to dash up to the Cape to be with his dad during emergency surgery and recovery. I've never met his dad; and this peculiar little project of mine is insignificant compared to family and health. But I'm happy to dedicate this set of plate photos to Daniel Senior, his complete recovery, and to a Christmas surrounded, rightly so, by his family.

Lessons learned

As long as I can remember, I have frequently answered the challenge of doing something new by making light of it. It's been a great way to avoid new experiences over which I might not have some sort of control. It doesn't have to make sense, and it doesn't.

Luckily there have been strong and determined people who won't let me slide: they'll get me to experience something they know is rewarding in order to share it with them. This goes for foreign travel or driving a car -- both examples for which I can thank Kiki.

One of the challenges of longest standing has been riding on a roller coaster. I think as long as I was small and hysterical about it, nobody would bother to make me go through with it -- why bother? Once I had safely gotten through childhood, the challenge seldom arose again.

Noria-de-Beirut
Originally uploaded by Paula y Vicente

Oddly, the same once applied to Ferris wheels, and would have stayed in the running if Kiki hadn't shamed me into riding one with her. (It helps that she's not afraid of them.) Mind you, it would have been a little less scary if it hadn't been on the Corniche in Beirut, Lebanon.

As summer threatened to turn into fall, and with it the specter of Astroland's closing indefinitely while its new owner figured out how to make the most of the real estate, it dawned on me that I might miss the chance to sample the Cyclone, a classic 'woodie' roller coaster that's one of the most echt New York experiences.

So I arbitrarily picked a weekday evening after work to trek out to Coney Island. (I'd never experienced Coney Island at night either, not out of fear but a lack of opportunity. ) It was probably best that I went by myself: It was easier to carry through with it when there was nobody to whimper to, nobody to let me off the hook one more time.

It was a gorgeous day, and the sun was headed toward the horizon when I strode up to the ticket booth to buy my all-you-can-ride admission. I dismissed the idea of trying out some other, less exciting ride and went straight to the Cyclone. There wasn't a line, and I was waved right through to the awaiting cars. This was all just too easy.

I figured I really didn't want to be in the very front: I may be brave at long last, but no need to push it. I was secured into my seat and off we went.

Wow! Why had I waited so long to have so much fun? Okay, the first time we dropped, and I felt as if the cars were leaving the tracks, I was grabbing the brace so emphatically that I could feel a pain shoot through my shoulder. I eased up a little, we went into a jarring right-hand turn, and from then on it was just a really big blast. I was more worried about being thrown from side to side. But anyone who's ridden the subway has had plenty of similar experiences, what's the big deal? I was less sanguine about those drops, and the unavoidable feeling that this was going to be the ride when all the bolts would shake out and I'd be sent hurtling into the crowds.

I didn't have to think twice before making the circuit to the front again and riding a second time. It was even better the second time, since I felt I could let go and actually scream a little. (Most of the sounds during my first ride went "whoa-oa-oa!") Wow!

Having accomplished what I set out to do, I could relax and take in the rest of the Boardwalk: play a little skee ball, ride the Wonder Wheel (I had steadfastly stayed on the ground the last time, me and my fellow husband, as the womenfolk rode), have a dinner of shrimp and onion rings, and wade through the water as an enormous orange moon rose in the east. (Unfortunately my camera battery died just as I whirled and spied the moonrise.) All in all, a magical evening, and one entirely of my own creation.

Before you ask, I'm not interested in bungee jumping any time soon.

What is this thing called, Love?

It might strike you suddenly and unintentionally ... and just as quickly fade away. You're in a room with someone. Without exchanging a single word, you feel a strong emotional bond, a quiet contentedness, hanging in the air. And since it just may be the very silence that produces to the sensation, you say nothing, as if to do so might just break the spell.

Ever since I last experienced this phenomenon I have been frustrated finding an adequate turn of phrase for it. I don't know whether I am more diverted by my discovery or my inability to find a word to describe it. And what's more, I've been thinking about this phenomenon for several months now ... and this post has been waiting in the posting queue just as long.

This ‘thing’ is probably most identified with ‘old married couples’ (or as I would prefer to have it, ‘personal relationships of long standing’). And that’s certainly how I've experienced it most often. Yet it might ring just as true between a person and his pet. It can cross genders and relationships and can apply equally to guys on a fishing trip, strangers on a train, or even co-workers.

Rummaging through my vocabulary (and with the 'help' of my favorite thesaurus program, thesaurus.com) I have come up with nothing but ringers: Companionship is the one I'm having the hardest time shaking off. The word sounds rather stilted and calls up an image of a companion pet like a dog or cat.

When I shared this dilemma with Kiki, she teasingly came up with the mawkish Togetherness. I shot back with the soulless Solidarity, which she contends could apply to people who didn't even know each other, and smacks more of politics than relationships.

(In a recent conversation a friend brought up a similar issue in the context of the social hardships of urban living: hanging out. Unfortunately for me, this warrants a post of its own, or at least some concerted surfing the 'net' to find others' wisdom and solutions.)

When I began drafting this post, my interest was entirely on instances of the phenomenon, not on the lack of it. But since then I've come to recognize a contrary phenomenon (or maybe just the absence of it). Not that it helps me come up with a good word.

Does anyone else recognize this? You got a good word for it? 

The title of this blog post hearkens to a risqué double entendre of days gone by, a play on the identical Cole Porter tune (that is, without the comma). I seem to remember it evoked by the censorious author of “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.”

Summer interlude, with flamingos

It has been so quiet in this space -- I have been wrestling for months with a blog post that simply won't write itself! -- that I offer in the meantime this video clip of the flamingos in the Bronx Zoo, from our visit there some weeks back.