Opinions vary, but when has that ever not been true.
Emery Farm porch drinking maple sodas; bi racial gay couple with dog arrives; dog comes to us; they tell us dog’s name; they tell us his pronouns are “he/him” – the dog; they go inside, leaving dog comfortably with us. When they come out again after some minutes, I explain that my pronouns are “Royal We/Royal Us”. Brown guy smiles – “this person made a joke”, he thinks. White guy looks like he’d like to chastise me, probably wondering if I’m cancellable, my evident unwillingness to play his woke game seemingly … well, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition”.
Having said that, let’s cement my thinking on socio-political matters by saying I am a big fan of Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Konstantin Kisin, 3 people with brain. Amala Ekpunobi also great. The list goes on.
So, triggered yet? No? Wonderful.
But I’m a creep; I’m a weirdo;
It has been a little over a year since my oncologist told me I have years to live. Three years ago I was told the mean life expectancy for someone like me (“like me” – c’est risible, n’est ce pas?) was 2.5 years. But that supposition rested on the idea that I would not respond well to mitigating efforts. When I did respond well, well …
At the time, during that first week of “Sorry, dude, it’s stage 4 and incurable”, I have etched in my memory standing in a hallway at MGH and, with moist eyes and a quavering voice, expressed my desire to get back to Paris once more. A white coated medic smiled at me and assured me that would be possible.
“Well, uh, that’s nice … but how does that mesh with the …?”
So, since then I’ve been back to Paris, and other fav spots in France and Italy, 3 times. I’ll write about it later. I mean, other people write in mainstream media all the time about travel. In fact, just a few minutes ago Francesca and I had our morning cappuccino and WSJ read (the WSJ is the only news outlet that does not annoy the fuck out of me with slanted political leanings, left and right). There was a travel section – yay. The first article was about the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Yay again. But, wtf. 50% of the article was all about the author’s feelings as she walked to some old theatre, her description very reminiscent of those gothic novels a friend of ours used to be addicted to. You know the ones: a bare chested pirate or prince looks to the horizon, and a beautiful young woman looks up longingly at his face, one shoulder of her dress being torn in whatever tremulous adventure they’d just experienced. And then it hit me: I’m a 74 year old curmudgeon, and this article is not in any way, shape, or form, aimed at me. This article is a textual selfie, TikTok or Instagram post. The author is the star, Sicily the romantic backdrop. I’m a Boomer. This was aimed at Zs or younger Millennials, not me, at all. My time is over, as is the time of the truly harrowing travels of Henry Morton Stanley, whose account of traveling up the Congo River scared the bejesus out of me as a grad student. THAT was travel! Anyway, so there it is. Still, the last paragraph of the article I found quite pleasing. This was something more than just a selfie; it was an experience, and at the end she managed to pull out an awesome summation involving cultural adaptation and yearning. Well, this was, after all, the WSJ.
What the hell am I doin’ here?; I don’t belong here
While I’m on the subject, Francesca and I went to a Labor Day gathering at the home of a former UNH physics professor. All the other attendees were either former UNH physics people, or their significant others.
One of the attendees was a fellow with a german accent named Jochen Heisenberg. When food was served people broke into two groups to munch their food. Jochen sat to my left. A friend had informed me he was related to the illustrious Werner, but I hadn’t by that point put in my hearing aid, so I missed the explanation of how distantly related Jochen was to Werner. Being me, I asked him. “He was my father,” he replied. WTF! Ok, so I spent a year and a half as a physics adjunct at UNH sharing that space with the son of Werner. However, Werner Heisenberg was never in the running for my fav physicist from that seminal era. Bohr and Pauli were my least favorite; Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Einstein somewhere in the middle; and Dirac, with no close second, by far my favorite. Not a hero, mind you – I don’t do those – but Dirac’s philosophy of science was similar to mine, and my published work builds directly upon Dirac’s.
I mentioned to the younger Heisenberg that I admired Dirac the most. He nodded, accepting the validity of my opinion, it seemed. Then he told me that well after WWII he had gone to a conference with his father. At some point Dirac, having been made aware who Jochen was, wandered over to him and introduced himself. Fascinating. That was uncharacteristically forward of Dirac.
Francesca and I then proceeded to dominate the ensuing conversation, which I gently nudged in a socio-political direction. I felt compelled to do this as the vast majority of academics – this group being no exception – have, as Francesca puts it, drunk deeply of the Woke Kool-Aid, and their socio-political views I felt confident I would find irksome. So I started by saying I was a fan of Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Who? Not a single one of these progressive muggles had ever heard of either. And when I explained their podcasts could be found on Youtube, a source of streaming videos including the history videos Francesca and I watch every morning while eating breakfast in bed, one person wondered how that was possible. Is Youtube a TV app? With great effort I refrained from smacking my forehead in frustration. (I mean, really, I may as well have been trying to converse pleasantly with a group of yak herders in Outer Mongolia; no common ground, see? More uncomfortable pauses than actual sharing.) So, assuming they were aware of the intellectual firmament in 1920s Europe, I proceeded to regale them with my encyclopedic knowledge of that decade’s art scene in Paris. That went over better.
Remember in one of my books this gem? As as adjunct physics teacher at Brandeis U, after a particularly lively class, an older student (quite a bit of grey in her hair) came up to me and said, “You don’t belong here.” Indeed. That was a very incisive comment. I did not belong in academia. Still, it would have been somewhat more useful had she explained where I did belong. Other than as Francesca’s husband and soulmate, I’ve found no home on this world. Maybe that’s enough, and always will be.
Mi chiamo 7stones
I have been learning French via DuoLingo for many years. I got to the point where I knew continuing down that path would result in negligible further rewards. I wasn’t going to remember a lot of the somewhat more advanced material it was hitting me with. Furthermore, Francesca and I, my health being sufficient, plan to spend our next EU vacation in Switzerland and Italy. French will not be needed. Still, I didn’t want to give up on French, but I needed to learn more Italian. Brilliant idea: learn Italian on DuoLingo, but with French as the base language. Two weeks in and I am very happy with this switch.
Finally, 7stones.com is my web address, but, in the years since established, other entities in the world have also used 7stones for their internet presence. For example, there is a shipping company in Nigeria, which tacks on an .ng to distinguish it from mine. But the internet is intricate, and not error free. I get frequent emails relating to recent business dealings with this other 7stones. I seldom look at the emails – it’s pretty dry stuff – but I find my inclusion in some of the company’s doings strangely delightful. I should investigate their retirement plan.
