A pithy story about a great thinker:

A lady once asked [Samuel Johnson] how he came to define ‘pastern’, the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as might be expected, he at once answered, “Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.”

When it comes to the worldwide economic crisis, we are not so wise as Johnson. We cannot admit, simply, that we never knew how to manage our evolving economic structure in the first place, that we were ignorant of what we were doing. We compound the ignorance by accusing the financiers or the Republicans or even the Democrats of knowingly doing the wrong thing, when in fact they were doing the wrong thing without knowing it was so.

Do the financiers deserve our anger and our reproach? Yes, inasmuch as they were doing the wrong thing and asserting their knowledge without having any. Do the Republicans deserve the same? Yes, for the identical reason. The Democrats are by no means off the hook, however, since they, too, rode the wave of the late 1990s in more or less satisfied complacency.

Let me restate my point: We were ignorant of how to run the economy, and we compound the ignorance if we place blame incorrectly. For example, it’s poppycock to say that it’s G.W. Bush’s and the Republicans’ fault because they were lax and reckless in the area of financial regulation. They were lax and reckless. They may have been more lax and reckless than were Clinton et al. But can we claim with any certainty that a particular set of regulations could have prevented this whole mess? No, we cannot. (Obviously, we can imagine some extreme kind of regulatory regime that had been able to prevent all these ills; but can’t claim that such a regime had simultaneously preserved all of the desirable aspects of the economy.)

We human beings are very good at putting an erudite spin on whatever we are doing. Back in the 1780s, chemists were writing very smart, very scholarly texts about the role of phlogiston and calx. They were not totally on the wrong track, but they were far from correct. Slowly, eventually, people who supported a correct theory of oxidation arrived, participated in the battle of ideas as the minority, and eventually won because they were correct.

Likewise, until recently, you could find all manner of books and blogs and television programs and whatnot about why the economy was exactly as it should be. At any given time, of course, there are doomsayers of both the credible and crackpot variety warning us about an impending economic collapse, but their ideas and claims in recent years had no influence. Now, however, that things have incontrovertibly gone to merde, the media instructs, explains, and edifies concerning the causes and characters as though it were all the most intelligible and obvious thing.

The ex post facto chatter is just a magnified version of what may be seen in real time on Google or Yahoo or CNBC or any other news source concerning the movement of the stock market: the moment the market rises or falls a palpable amount, bang! They have the cause explained–right there for you! “Investors bargain hunting as doldrums recede.” “Dow dips on semi-unfavorable consumer confidence numbers.” Sometimes they even know what the market will do before it does it: “SNP set to inch upward after Fed chairman feeds frenzy.” And so on.

The media is only reflecting our discomfort with ignorance. We want to know and, if we don’t, we’ll pretend we do. Meanwhile, we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and–whoops!–we find that we’ve royally screwed with the planet’s temperature. We create all manner of technology, celebrate it and our increasingly connected and peaceful world with World’s Fairs–then, within a span of twenty years, we fight two World Wars. We genetically modify crops and–who knows what will happen? We radically alter the structure of the economy in such and such a way and–we know what happened. But why?

It’s not satisfying to recognize ignorance as the ultimate cause of our plight, but it’s the correct first step, one I do not see being taken in the media. Along with the explaining and blaming without sufficient knowledge may be found the misconception that the roots of the problem are shallow and recently grown. In other words, our method of managing the economy was hunky-dory when Clinton was president, but then Bush was in charge and… nonsense! Again, we don’t know exactly when we went wrong, or how.

George Bernard Shaw, in his introduction to the play Heartbreak House, which deals with WWI, talks at length about that war’s causes. One passage made a big impression on me:

Nature’s Long Credits

Nature’s way of dealing with unhealthy conditions is unfortunately not one that compels us to conduct a solvent hygiene on a cash basis. She demoralizes us with long credits and reckless overdrafts, and then pulls us up cruelly with catastrophic bankruptcies. Take, for example, common domestic sanitation. A whole city generation may neglect it utterly and scandalously, if not with absolute impunity, yet without any evil consequences that anyone thinks of tracing to it. In a hospital two generations of medical students may tolerate dirt and carelessness, and then go out into general practice to spread the doctrine that fresh air is a fad, and sanitation an imposture set up to make profits for plumbers. Then suddenly Nature takes her revenge. She strikes at the city with a pestilence and at the hospital with an epidemic of hospital gangrene, slaughtering right and left until the innocent young have paid for the guilty old, and the account is balanced. And then she goes to sleep again and gives another period of credit, with the same result.

This is what has just happened in our political hygiene. Political science has been as recklessly neglected by Governments and electorates during my lifetime as sanitary science was in the days of Charles the Second.

I find it interesting that Shaw uses a financial metaphor to make his point! In any case, we are currently ignorant of correct “economic hygiene,” and we furthermore do not know when and where and how we went awry. Correct hygiene must now begin with our admission that we do not know the cause of the disease or how to cure it. Certainly, there are some sensible practices that we can and must put into practice immediately, but, until our science of economics improves, we will continue to proceed on a trial and error basis, celebrating the booms and enduring the inevitable busts.

Sorry I have not written in a great while! I have been swamped with writing work, and my life has been going through such rapid changes that the moment I feel like writing about them something new is happening. Things are good, however, and I hope now to settle into a rhythm and start posting again on a frequent basis.

I have news about our baby born with a birth defect of the liver. He has been back in the hospital for the past week or so. His dad is back in Japan, and so his mother has been staying with him. I was rather upset that I was not called by the hospital to interpret for them this time, as was the mom, who, after someone else showed up, specifically told the hospital that she wanted to use me. Oh well. In any case, our infant friend is doing okay but perhaps has had hepatitis of some sort. As I have not been interpreting for them, I have not heard the facts directly from the doctors, but it seems that the Kasai surgery that was performed is still working. That’s good news. I would request that you continue to keep this child and his family in your prayers.

First post in which I talked about interpreting at the hospital for a family whose baby had a severe birth defect of the liver: biliary atresia, or, in his case, the complete absence of a bile duct

Second post with update.

Thanks to everyone for the prayers and moral support along the way. I interpreted for the family for the baby’s checkup on Friday. Thus far, everything is going well. It will take about two more months or so to confirm that the Kasai procedure was a success. This family has been so kind to me. They bought my daughter a beautiful outfit from Gymboree, which she loves.

I have not heard anything more about the family whose baby was born with a birth defect of the heart. I assume at this point that no news is good news.

Thanks for your continued prayers for these children. I will provide updates as I learn more.

Under what circumstances do you say, “I love you,” also known as “dropping the L-bomb,” when you enter a new romantic relationship?

In considering the matter, one digs into a veritable sundae of sociological, psychological, and spiritual issues:

• What is the vision of romantic love in the society?
• What phrases, if any, in the society indicate a person’s belief that he or she is feeling romantic love of a particular level for someone?
• Regardless of a particular society’s vision of romantic love, what actually is happening in “love” on various levels: sociological, psychological, physical, and spiritual?

One could write a book about how love has veen viewed through the ages and what phrases were used to indicate one’s recognition that love is present. Here, however, I’d like to talk about how things are in the US and Japan and how they jibe with my opinion of things.

Whereas in the past love and marriage were viewed in a more (but not necessarily exclusively) sociological context (i.e., marriage was more for practical and economic purposes, such as procreation and bringing families and even countries together), in the US we see marriage as existing for personal fulfillment: i.e., we want to find the person who complements us and experience love with him or her. The experience of love is primary; procreation and other aspects of the partnership are definitely secondary.

The following seem to me to be the basic principles of feeling love and using the phrase “I love you” in the US:

• People in a loved-based partnership or relationship (e.g., marriage, living together, girl/boyfriend) ought to be feeling love for one another. Contrariwise, people who don’t have such feelings ought not be in such a partnership. For, there is a general belief that married people that don’t “really love each other” should get divorced and find partners they “really love.”
• People who feel love for each other ought to express those feelings verbally (“I love you”), and something is wrong if they don’t, either with the relationship or with the partner or partners who won’t say the magic words.
• Mutually saying “I love you” is a major milestone in the development of a relationship.
• One ought not say “I love you” without really meaning it (whatever “really meaning it” means).

How about in Japan? The vision of romantic love in that country is not tremendously different from our own, and the way people approach dating is roughly the same as well. Furthermore, the phrase “ai shite iru” (literally, “I am loving [you], with the object of the verb usually left implied, as is common in Japanese grammar) has approximately the same sociological import as “I love you.” Once people are in a relationship, however, there seems to be much less of an expectation for verbal reinforcement.

So, according to the unspoken rules, we need to feel love for someone before we say “I love you.” We know as individuals what it’s like to feel romantic love for someone, but what is really going on? What neurological patterns are at work? What is happening in the spiritual dimension? We must confess our ignorance.

Furthermore, we cannot assume that a person who says “I love you” is necessarily feeling the same things that we are. We may try to judge through our five senses and even through senses beyond these whether the person is sincere in his or her words, but I have yet to see anywhere a table or chart that tells us what what degree of love goes with what facial expression or amount of light shining from the fourth chakra.

No, here we are definitely working in a world of fuzzy logic, in which a person must self-assess his or her feelings of love to decide whether to release the three-word trope, and we must in turn assess through uncertain signs whether that trope has been released appropriately. To complicate matters further, people drop the L-bomb even when they do not “really feel” love. For example, they may drop it in hopes of placating their partner now and “really feeling” love later. Or they may, like myself, be willing to say it under a rather lax standard, in which romantic love is conflated with altruistic love.

It’s true: I drop the L-bomb rather easily and retract it rather cautiously, as I try to “love everyone,” and hey–even if my romantic feelings for you are deceased, still “I love you,” right? I need to ponder more whether it is proper for me to use these words in this way.

All that said, there are of course times when the feeling of love is so strong on both sides and the energy working between and emanating from the persons in combination so great that only a fool would say, “We don’t know what’s really happening here in the hidden dimension; therefore we cannot say if they are really in love.” I would even venture to say that most of the time, when people say, “I love you,” they are expressing something sure and true, an apt symbol of something important and mysterious. Although I may be lax in dropping the L-bomb myself, I am no cynic when it comes to this most important of things.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

DAYS.

Daughters of Time, the hypocrite Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

§           §           §

Wow, what a great poem, and an unusual one for Emerson. He rarely wrote unrhymed verse, and the meditative tone of regret here is not to be found in many of his other works.

The feeling of slow movement, the Days walking in single file, is exquisite and immediately makes a deep impression on the imagination, as does the selection of offerings large and small.

Emerson’s poems are often difficult to interpret. Why are the Days hypocrites? Does the narrator regret his choice (simple things instead of the world itself), feeling that his will was insufficient; or does he contemn the Day for scorning his simplicity? Or is it a little bit of both?

My impression is that Emerson is commenting with some measure of regret on the way of time (“muffled and dumb”: time cannot speak for or explain itself) and the way of the world (“the pomp”). Our days promise to bring us anything we want, so long as we are willing to fight for it (“after his will”), but if we forget our “morning wishes” (perhaps our big dreams when we are young) and opt for the simple things, the world looks down upon our choice (“the scorn”).

A deep, beautiful poem that gives one much for pondering, both in image and in thought.

I think I finally got something: I will sometimes have opportunities in life to be with someone or influence someone that I ought not take. Step away from the karma. Don’t force the puzzle piece. Let semi-awake dogs fall back asleep.

This was the great lesson of 2007 and 2008: I took the sales approach to life: it was about selling my product to people, convincing them that I had what they really needed. I not only sold my business products, I sold myself as a product: have a relationship with an awesome person. This is what you want, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Recently, my readers have seen me return to this post again and again: “If the energy is not coming toward you….” My message for today is related but not quite the same. I should not try to force something if the energy is not coming toward me, certainly, but I also should not involve myself in something when the energy that is coming toward me is negative or conflicted.

In the past week I have had an epiphany about a relationship that began in late 2007 and affected me greatly throughout 2008. She was in a huge karma war with her then-boyfriend (now the father of her unborn child); she wanted to be with him and wanted to escape from him at the same time. She used my energy toward her to “escape,” but she was not done with the old relationship. To be sure, I was sold a bill of goods: she told me she loved me, emphatically; she told her mother we were getting married; and so on. Nevertheless, had I been more perceptive or more honest with myself about what I did perceive, I could have saved us both a huge amount of trouble (the relationship ended in what these days is called an “epic fail”).

In May of 2008 I took a new approach to business that has given me both more money and more harmony in life: I don’t sell myself or my skills. I network a bit, I talk about my work as a writer, and if people think, “I can use this guy to make money and make my life easier,” then they give me a try; if they don’t, they don’t. The upshot is that I only end up working with people who are excited to be working with me. I let the energy, the karma, come to me.

It has taken longer for me to learn this same lesson as it pertains to relationships. The type of woman for whom I have been searching is rather rare, and thus the temptation has been to see her where she is not. Accept no substitutes. At last, I may be prepared to do what I need to do: Keep my eyes open. Engage in appropriate search methods. But wait. Wait. Wait. Let the her energy, her karma, come to me.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

FROM HAFIZ.

I said to the heaven that glowed above,
O hide yon sun-filled zone,
Hide all the stars you boast;
For, in the world of love
And estimation true,
The heaped-up harvest of the moon
Is worth one barley-corn at most,
The Pleiads’ sheaf but two.

§           §           §

This is in the “Translations” section of my complete poems by Emerson, so presumably he translated something (a complete poem, a fragment?) by Hafez, a very great Persian poet of whom I was, until I read Emerson’s lyric above, almost completely ignorant (perhaps the name rang a bell, but that’s about it).

Emerson’s lyric is probably a butchery of whatever Hafez wrote, but it’s a nice little poem in its own right. Having read through (or shall I say, “processed”?) all of Emerson’s poems, I must opine that the success of this small work depends mostly on luck: Emerson was best when he kept it short, which he didn’t often do, but almost all of his short poems also lack “it” (indeed, I really liked only ten or so in total, all of which I intend to post on this blog).

Why does this poem work for me? The metaphor is apt, and the lines of irregular length and the irregular rhyme scheme in combination with the effect of the last two lines add up to something clever and aurally and mentally satisfying.

I don’t know if there is a term for it, but I really like the poetical effect exhibited in the last two lines, in which the latter phrase builds upon the former but elides much of its structure:

Is worth one barley-corn at most,
The Pleiads’ sheaf [is worth] but two [at most].

To me, this kind of structure has great elan and, in this case, “makes” the poem.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

LOVE.

Love on his errand bound to go
Can swim the flood and wade through snow,
Where way is none, ‘t will creep and wind
And eat through Alps its home to find.

§           §           §

A good quatrain is not easy to write. In just four lines it must give the reader a sense of satisfaction, the feeling that a complete idea has been expressed well.

This quatrain is snappy in meter, full in concept, and compelling in imagery. The escalation from trudging through the snow to gnawing through the very mountains is believable. The reader may adopt the poem not merely as a succinct way to imagine the power of love, but also as a mantra for use in achieving his or her own love goals.

Some thoughts remaining from 2008:

Promises are for keeping, not believing. I guess that’s the big one.

Along with that, I’d like to add a new word to the lexicon: po’titlement, the sense of entitlement some people get not because they’re in the elite but because they habitually perceive others as better off than they, even if they’re not. In other words, “I’m po’, so I deserve mo’. Pick up the tab.” 2008 was a year in which I dealt with several such people.

The Saks store brand tee shirts are really nice and not too expensive, either.

A new way to blow someone off: “Blog about it.” Sample dialog:

A: Did you eat all the cookies? Those were for everyone in the office.
B: Yeah–so what?
A: They’re all gone.
B: I know, I ate them.
A: Well, they were for everyone in the office.
B: Eh, just blog about it, won’t you?

B is clearly in the wrong here; perhaps s/he is suffering from po’titlement: the right to eat others’ cookies because there has always been a lack of cookies in his or her own life. Speaking of which, I could use a Krispy Kreme doughnut right about now, but I’m not going to have one for the following reasons:

• I am in Crown Point, Indiana, and there are no Krispy Kreme joints around here.
• I am not going to leave the house, anyway.
• I am on a diet.

Actually, I’m not really on a diet. That reminds me of a joke:

A: I’m on a seafood diet.
B: I’ve heard this one before–that means you “see food” and you eat it, right?
A: No, it means I primarily eat seafood.

I think I told it wrong.

Caol Isla is okay, but Lagavulin is so much better. I have not become a huge fan of Arran. The Glenlivet Nadurra was very nice. That’s about the extent of my splurging over the past two or three months. I managed to please people with Christmas presents that didn’t cost too terribly much (or they were good at feigning delight).

Anyhow, I continue to reflect on the topic of this post, in which I talk about the necessity of having the energy coming toward oneself in order for an endeavor to succeed. It’s not quite the same concept, but one thought that went through my head from time to time in 2008 was this: Velcro has two sides. In a relationship, whether of a personal or business nature, both sides should come together eagerly and naturally. It’s not a perfect metaphor, as one side of the velcro will actually stick to just about anything that’s fuzzy. So, the moral is: don’t be fuzzy. Don’t be fuzzy-headed! So often in 2008, I was. What a crazy year that was.

MATT ROUGE

DRY.

A habit broken months ago today,
when all the little bubblings of the earth
retreated from my judgment of their worth,
in taunting glee has come again to stay.

Without a meeting to restrain the flow,
a bottle to unpurchase for the dearth,
I kept my hands cupped for the pouring forth,
always a draft just several clicks away.

Not all I knew of spirit and its ways
revered that source or blessed my hitting send,
and now that nothing serves to drown my gaze,
I thank and curse the method of the end:
a well still coaxing thirstiest desires
yet dry as anything in summer’s trend.