Let Me Just Slip Into This Black Robe, Here

Well, the first thing that has to be said about Alain de Botton is that he’s phenomenally wise, profoundly insightful, unimaginably creative and wonderfully incisive.

I say all this, by the way, to avoid a repetition of the 2009 incident in which de Botton wrote, “I will hate you until the day I die,” to a New York Times critic, who had been less than kind about a book de Botton had written. 

In fact, I have liked all of the de Botton talks that I have seen on YouTube—he does have a razor-sharp mind, but who, graduating with a double-starred first from Caius College, Cambridge, wouldn’t?

There was the talk on atheism 2.0. The old version of atheism only established one thing: there is no god. OK—but what about the good things that religion brought us? A sense of community—there are times when a congregation carries a grief-stricken parishioner through dark times. Or what about morality? Yes, you can argue that a person shouldn’t need god to be moral; as well, many atheists are moral. But the church, ideally, was or is a constant, drumming force for reminding us to be living a moral life. And I liked what de Botton said about religion’s view on art: it is completely not art for art’s sake. It is strictly utilitarian; the purpose of art is to elicit emotion and teach lessons. That’s why you have that depiction of Christ on the cross, or the last supper, or Moses parting the Red Sea. It’s there for a reason.

I followed him through the lecture, “A kinder, gentler, philosophy of success.” Interesting, there, what he had to say about meritocracy, which he, in general, favors. Who couldn’t—it’s the belief that anyone, with enough work, can get what he deserves. That’s great in the case of Obama, but what about me? Iguanas has sold maybe six copies, so am I a dud? Do I deserve my failure?

De Botton says no—remember Mathew 24:13? “The race is not given to the swift nor the strong but he who endures to the end?” (Franny may be channeling me, or I her, but shouldn’t it be “him who endures?”) OK—that wasn’t actually his point, on rereading Mathew. De Botton thinks that despite all of our efforts, the playing field will never be entirely level. And he should know—his father was a seriously rich guy, though not, apparently, a terribly supportive one. My father was middle class but supportive—so who had the better deal? The thing is that in both cases it makes a difference, and neither he nor I had any say in the matter.

Then of course I had to listen to his talk about “How to think more about sex.” I mean, what guy wouldn’t? And that, finally, led me to Barbara Ehrenreich, whose book Smile or Die; How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. I had liked the book, and could especially relate to it, since I had been through about 94 doses of quite concentrated positive thinking in my seven years at Wal-Mart. We had a monthly meeting, a regular feature of which was the motivational speaker. One particular speaker was a charming old lady who had to be lugged up to the stage because the cancer treatment was still affecting her but. not to worry, because the world was getting.., and here she broke into song…

Mejor, mejor, mejor!

Yes, her world was getting better, better, better—sing it, group! Sing it, everybody! Put your heart in your mouths and a smile on your face and beam your positive attitude into the radiant white light! Let’s hear it again!

We sang it again.

And even though it’s Monday, and it rained all weekend, and the housework never did get done—we’re alive, we’ve got jobs, we’ve got our families, and every day we can be sure that we are getting…

She put her ear to the microphone….

I loved all that stuff. Well, most of it. There was a day, in those months when I spent waiting for the ax to fall, when I came upon the in-house motivational speaker, Milton, filling up buckets of water before a Human Resources meeting. And no, he wasn’t the kind of guy who mops floors.

I could bear it no more; the meeting was mandatory and I skipped it.

Which may be why I’m not there.

Ehrenreich states that the main reason people are canned is because of their bad attitude, and asking skeptical questions about everybody’s great idea—hey, let’s give mortgages to people with lousy credit and then bundle ‘em up and sell ‘em off (sorry, the mortgages, not the people)—was a classic example of negativity. It’s not, of course; it’s a critical part of an organization. There’s a place for the people who refused to be swayed by the latest craziness.

Well, de Botton has started The School of Life; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

The School of Life is a social enterprise founded in 2008 and based in a small shop in Central London. The School offers a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well, addressing such questions as why work is often unfulfilling, why relationships can be so challenging, why it is ever harder to stay calm and what one could do to try to change the world for the better.[1] The School also offers psychotherapy and bibliotherapy services and runs a small shop which has been described as 'an apothecary for the mind'.[2]

Wow—what a seriously good idea! Oh, and what do atheistic you do when you’re in London on a Sunday morning? Here’s the answer:

On Sunday mornings The School of Life hosts secular sermons in which cultural figures are invited to give their opinion about 'what values we should live by today'.[7] These theatrical events are usually held at Conway Hall in London. Past preachers have included Tom Hodgkinson on Loving Your Neighbour, Geoff Dyer on Punctuality, Sam Roddick on Seduction and Alain de Botton on Pessimism.[8] The Financial Times described the sermons as being 'hedged about with all sorts of ironic paraphernalia, designed to reassure the trendy young audience that they are not about to be harangued by a religious zealot'.[9]

Oh, and that bibliotherapy up there? Here’s the answer:

 The School of Life offers a literary consultation service it calls bibliotherapy.[10] For a fee, people are able to meet with a bibliotherapist who will talk to them about their reading habits and 'prescribe' books which relate to their interests or concerns. The School of Life's bibliotherapists include the novelist Susan Elderkin.

Confession: I completely screwed up my last goal, which was to tell everybody in the world by midnight, 31 December 2012, that they could have a good, peaceful, spiritually charged death in their home at the hour (or thereabouts) of their choosing.

 I fucked up.

Alain, can I come give a sermon?

Odyssey

It was a day when the Puerto Rican Goddess chose her theme with typical exuberance.

“Our great grandfather came to Puerto Rico from the Canary Islands as a very young man without a penny. He collected wood in the fields, and then went and stood by the side of the road. Took anything anybody would give him for the wood. He saved and saved, never spending any money on anything, but buying land. He ended up a very rich man, and bought one of the first cars in a town west of here. Then he realized: he could travel for less on the públicos—the public cars. So he sold the car back to the dealer.”

A story a friend, Carlos, told me at the café. We were talking families, and how for the generation of the Great Depression it’s agony to shell out a dime they don’t need to spend.

Now, of course, they can afford all the help they need. But Carlos’s parents are still living frugally, still wanting to pass something on to their children, still worried that they’ll run through their money and be a burden.

“Your mother always wanted to go to Europe,” said Carlos’s father, when Carlos, having reviewed his father’s finances, told him just how well he had done.

They hadn’t, of course. They had stayed home and worked and gotten places their parents hadn’t—both Carlos’s parents went to the States and got Master’s Degrees, both worked, both believed passionately in getting ahead.

No time for Europe.

Oh, and no money, either.

There were similar stories in my family. Franny’s family were eccentrics, Jack came from salt-of-the-earth Norwegian immigrants. No money there, although there is a hospital ward that my grandmother had donated somewhere in Chicago. And she hadn’t had a car until she was shamed into it by hearing a rumor that the Newhouses were too poor to buy one. So she bought a Cadillac, drove it to church, drove it back, had the tires taken off, and kept it on cinder blocks in the front yard.

And like Carlos’s parents, Jack had been a big believer of getting ahead, making progress, going somewhere and making a life that was better than the person’s who had given you that life.

And then giving a hand to somebody less fortunate—but as hardworking—as you.

Which is why Jack had called up his old friend at the Urban League, sometime in the late 80’s.

He’d gotten it into his head that parents needed to read to their kids.

Well, he certainly did.

There’s a photo of me, somewhere, with Jack lying down on the couch, and me sitting on a pillow above his head. He’s holding the book that we both are reading.

So Jack had teamed up with his old buddy, and they were busy on a project involving filming parents reading a book, visible to the viewer, to their kids. At least that’s how I remember it. And since that had been Jack’s project-of-the-moment when he died, we had asked for donations to the program in lieu of flowers.

As a writer, Jack respected conciseness. He tended, however, to use the telephone as an instrument to explore what he thought. He would call his friend at the Urban League, get the voice mail, and then leave one, two or even three lengthy, pontificating messages. The Urban League guy wrote a warm tribute to Jack after he died, and finally confessed that most of the time, he had only listened to the concluding message.

Right—so it seemed to be a day organized around some simple themes: poverty, getting ahead, hard work and giving back. Which had been as the well the theme of the remarkable documentary I had seen the night before.

On the flimsiest of excuses, I had written an old high school classmate, Emily Auerbach, now a distinguished professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We hadn’t been close, but we knew each other. I was a cellist, she an oboist—we shared a lot of Shostakovich Fifth together.

Franny had mentioned her, once or twice, over the years and had attended some of her lectures. And she’s no lightweight. Margaret Drabble writes about Searching for Jane Austen, “Emily Auerbach's approach to Jane Austen is lively, engaging, and thoroughly modern. Like Austen, Auerbach wears her wide learning lightly and imparts a great deal of information in a most enjoyable manner.”

Right, Margaret Drabble—the heaviest of guns….

But I have, as you know, until the end of February 2013 to get my message out. You can have a good, comfortable death at the time and place of your choice. You don’t need to rot away in a nursing home. You can die at home with the cat on your bed on a spring afternoon—just as Franny did.

So it was time to call in whatever artillery seemed at hand. I tracked down Emily—not hard to do—and sent her an email.

Some time elapsed. She replied, apologizing for the delay. My email talking about the book I had written about the death of my mother had arrived…

…on the day Emily had buried her mother.

So it was one of those times that an email couldn’t do it. Time to phone. I did, stammered out an apology, and then began to watch the documentary for which Emily had sent me a link.

I’m happy to say that while I’ve been occupying myself with the daily trot and writing blog posts, some of my high school classmates are actually doing some real work. And no, not on Austen—which I’ve not read, but will—but on the south side of Madison. In a library—The Irwin A. and Robert D. Goodman Library. Didn’t know the library, but did recognize the building behind it.

The Madison Urban League.

Emily, it seems, never knew poverty, as I—knock on wood—have not. But her parents did, and were only able to escape it through the help of a remarkable institution, Berea College, which was free. So her parents, like Carlos’s and mine, had gone onward and upward, and now Emily was reaching out and giving a hand.

Or a handout. Or homework she had assigned and graded.

It’s called the Odyssey Project, and it’s a free, yearlong, fully accredited university course with the intention of getting people who never would have dreamed of going to the university…

…into the university.

And out, with a degree.

More than a degree. A changed life, or rather, lives. Because nothing happens in a vacuum. You’re a kid, and you watch your mother go from homelessness to university graduate. You think that doesn’t have an effect? Especially when she calls you on your skipping classes in high school.

She’s not big on subtlety, the Puerto Rican Goddess. She paints with a pretty big brush. Sometimes that’s best, I think. Sometimes the message really is simple. You can change lives. You can get ahead. If you’re sitting pretty now, stand up, look below you, reach down and give a hand.

Raf swears that there’s something unique about Wisconsin—its efficiency, its earnestness, its almost naïve belief that institutions and systems can work, and can get better. I scoff at the idea.

Until I see an old classmate in a room with thirty poor people on whom, as a colleague says, “she just won’t give up. She won’t let anyone slip away.”

And Raf passes the Kleenex to dry my tears.   

Junk Mail

It must have been the weakness brought on by two days of non-stop diarrhea. Otherwise, who can explain it?

Why would I buy a book about RickyMartin? 

It was something about Jack, I recall—he used to do this weird stuff. I can still remember the letters from Westinghouse and the funny little corporate trademark they had. And whatever happened to Westinghouse? Where’d they go off to?

Well, things are appearing and disappearing in a strange way, lately. Starting with Sonia—sorry, she’s not a thing, I know that. But there she was, big as life on my morning walk, looking at me as if she’d seen a ghost. 

Maybe she had….

So we agreed that we had to talk.

That we did yesterday, after I had been rescued from Rock River (Río Piedras) by an angel (Ángel) who took me home. In his BMW. 

No, not for what the iguanas do so well. This is a respectable household, sex toys on the carpet notwithstanding….

And he didn’t rescue me from the river, although in a sense he did. It was pretty much a river—just flowing down, not sideways. It was a water zero (aguacero).

Now where was I?     

Oh—Sonia, whom I met with Nicky, yesterday. And the curious news that Whitney Houston is dead. Wow, I said—that terrible voice has been stilled! News to me!

“Whitney Houston is dead,” I remarked to Sonia.

“Yeah, two months ago….”

Oh.

Well, no stranger than learning from Cousin Ruthie from Minnesota but in Chicago (and at the Drake Hotel, no less!) that Romney had won the Puerto Rico primary. We don’t actually vote for president, but we do go to the convention. Well, why not? It’s a party—in several senses of the word—and we do parties well down here. 

OK, I was struggling to hold up my end of the conversation with Cousin Ruthie, but I was able to keep up by mentioning that Rick Santorum was, apparently, a family man, a Christian, a believer in tradi….

“A lizard!” said Ruthie.

Oh. They hadn’t mentioned—or boomed—that.

Or maybe they had.

OK—so Whitney Houston has gone the way of Westinghouse, apparently—or maybe they’re both still going strong. I don’t know.

I do know that I started out talking about Ricky Martin….

And that there’s a book entitled I (yo) in Spanish and the same book entitled Me (me) in English. Written in English—I did check this—by a Puerto Rican (Martin, or Martín) living in Gringolandia to be read by me, a gringo living in Puerto Rico.  

Oh yes, and I had bought the book because I really thought that I should get going. Stir about. Get moving on this failure project, because really, it seems the right thing to do.

Jack would do it.

So Jack wrote to Westinghouse—shouldn’t I write to Ricky? But what would I say?

That’s why I bought the book.

Gotta find out something about the man….

Well, I learned that at Wal-Mart—direct marketing.

And it started out well enough, for Ricky, it seems, is completely in tune with and connected to his fans through…

Twitter.

WHAT!

No. 

I mean, NO!

I am not gonna join Twitter and tweet to Ricky. And hope that he tweets, or twitters, back. It’s gonna be a letter.

But what to say?

Well, here goes….

Dear Ricky,

First an apology. For years, you were the butt of a joke between Raf and me at 12:01 AM on the first day of the January.

We’d gulp the twelve grapes, down the champagne, and then say, soulfully…

“and may this be the year that Ricky finally meets the girl of his dreams!”

That was snide.

I’m sorry.

We do it all at our own rate.

And curiously, our lives seem to be running parallel, but on different tracks.

And in opposite directions.

I’m a classical musician, you’re a pop star.

You’re famous, I’m not.

You’ve written a book about me (yo) and I’ve written a blook—apparently—about my mother.

You’re interested in giving better lives to third-world kids.

I’m interested in giving better deaths to ancients (ancianos).

So that’s why I wrote the blook, and that’s why I need your help.

Your voice is louder than mine….or at least carries farther.

We have, Ricky, you and I (not me) only one year—actually now nine months—to get the word out.

You can cheat the nursing home.

You can slip away from the party, go home, and die in your own bed—all quite legally, morally and comfortably (more or less).

Ricky—read my blook, as I have not read yours.

Who knows anything about me?

Sincerely,

Marc Newhouse

Jack woulda done it better….

Varying Worlds

Where it all started I don’t know. Could have been the walk this morning, where Franny turned off the music again and started up the Goldberg Variations. Not my choice, but hey, it’s her walk (so said because I fell recently, and am now limping slowly…).

Or it could have been yesterday, when I got a call from Raf’s mom—could I help her send an email? Of course, and there I was—a son with an aging parent! Not quite Franny of course—and by that I mean no disrespect to Ilia, whose name I have now taught the computer. She’s equal, but not the same. Anyway, it’s all…well, the same. (The son and aging parent business, I mean….)

“We’re at a point where decisions have to be made,” she said, after I had calmed her down, written and rewritten her 60-year life story since graduation from Case Western, and read it to her four times, to assure accuracy. Oh, and then heard her call Cleveland, where she spoke to a nice young guy—William. At one point she had to hand the phone to me, and it wasn’t a language issue. Or rather, it was. He was talking passwords and updating profiles. She was just speaking her very good English.

OK, that done. Maybe it was the title of the friend of Franny’s who had written to me to thank me for sending the blook. He wrote from work and I peered at his name—“The Reverend Jeff….”

Well, I knew that, of course. But wow, talk about wearing your religion lightly! His wife had been the beacon of the Morning Glories, and Jeff himself had been there as well. He even took her to see the prairie. Yet never had he breathed a word of God. Or perhaps, never had he not. I don’t know—it’s confusing in my mind.

But I do think of the Failure Club, and the work I gotta do. So I hit him back and tell him I’m a man with a mission. I gotta get every man, woman and child to know about how Franny slipped away from the party and went gently home to rest. And skipped the nursing home in then process.

He responds within minutes, with a couple of possible contacts. And I feel a pressure in my shoulders, just like those days at Wal-Mart. Gotta go to work!

Which made me remember, perhaps, the day they canned me. The elegant Human Resources lady had read the letter—“your positions have been eliminated”—and really, that was no surprise. It was just the train coming closer, as I lay tied to the tracks. So why did I think…

‘…but I was just having fun!!’

Yup, I was back playing with friends, and Franny had come to scoop me up, and it was time to come home now, and well….

I was just having fun.

Well, now it’s time to get back to work, ‘cause I definitely have to write or call these guys and make contact and put myself out there and ask a favor, albeit for humanity. Write a book in which I tell the world that I almost heard voices, that I was gonna off myself, or even that I was gonna off Franny? Oh, that I can do.

Call a stranger? Nah!

‘Well, it’s started,’ I think, or shudder, and go off and take a walk. Franny’s walk.

I begin to consider the various ways I can get the message out. 

Scene One—the setting, a brightly lit shopping mall, Plaza las Américas 

Characters—a large crowd of shoppers, with one gringo

Dialogue: Gringo: “Con permiso, señora, pero mi madre muerta tiene un mensaje para usted."

It’s so ridiculous I’m NOT gonna translate.

Well, we have—that is Taí and I—better ideas. In fact, I like the idea of wearing a t-shirt I have designed in my mind. A photo of a nursing home interior, and elderly lady in a wheel chair, her hand grasping out. A nurse walking by, paying no attention. Above the photo? The words “Occupy? No *%#!%^ way!” Below the photo, the title of the blook.

I could do that, I think. It would be fun.

Well, I or Franny or we continue our walk, and guess what? A gay cruise is in town, and the Old City is full of gentlemen of that sort, as a friend used to say. And one of them is a charming couple. The man to the right is young and skinny (as I once was).  The other is examining the hanging roots of the ficus tree (as Raf still does.) And for reasons completely unknown, I decide to greet them.

“Buenos días, caballeros” I say, and that’s not all. I give it a Madrid spin, growling out the s as a sh and making the double ll sound like sherry sloshing in a glass.

They don’t respond but attend to their business: being young, happy, and—I do hope—in love.

And it hits me—wow, they’re living in another world! Or rather, the world that I lived in, at that age, is for them a faraway place. They told their parents that they were gay—the parents nodded and went back to the TV. They take a gay cruise, not because it’s gay but because it’s fun.

Different worlds.

And I come home and think of Jeff, or The Reverend, or whoever he is, and the work I have to do.

Or the play?

I just wanna have fun.