Category Archives: Memoirs

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Easter, Jelly Beans

I was born old and rational. I can’t remember when, or if, I ever believed in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus (who sometimes posed as Kris Kringle for obscure reasons). I think my parents were aware of my being on to the ruse, but I acted out my expected role for the sake of maintaining family solidarity and for my younger sister who was deep into fairies. My reward was a chance at all the goodies.

I love jelly beans in all their wonderful varieties, especially the big ones with shells that crumble deliciously on my tongue. Chocolate was good, but not a top favorite. Soft, chewy sugar bunnies and chicks with a slight glaze on their surface were right up there, almost at jelly bean level. The same for sugar foam bananas.

I tried to get excited about coloring Easter eggs, but one was enough for me to eat. They took up too much room in my stomach, which room could otherwise be available for the sugary treats.

I thought searching for eggs and candies in backyard bushes or obscure places in the house was pretty stupid and a waste of time, but I went along with this too.

I was greedy with the jelly beans. I attempted to hoard them for later enjoyment, but I am addicted and just don’t have the discipline to keep them longer than 24 hours.

I liked having the relatives and other adults focused on me and my sister during the time the fairies were real for her.

It all faded when my sister had reached age nine and the family couldn’t maintain the fictions anymore.

I still look forward to those jelly beans at Easter time.

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Best Day

I was eight years old, visiting, for the first time, the home of Mom’s oldest sister, my Aunt Bee, and her husband, Uncle Tommy. Mom had taken me and my sister Diane, age three, on the train from San Francisco south to Newport Beach for a summer vacation before the three of us were to move with Dad to Brooklyn at the end of the year, 1945.

Newport Beach was then a typical California beach town, except it had an important business: the fish cannery which Uncle Tommy managed. He and Aunt Bee lived in a house on the large lagoon, about a mile from the ocean beach.

Soon after we arrived Aunt Bee took Mom, Diane and me to the beach on a sunny day. I had been to the beach at San Francisco, but it is cold and uninviting, other than to run along the surf line almost fully clothed. Newport’s beach was different. It was warm, with lots of people sitting or playing, relaxed and happy in the sunlight.

I was wearing only a pair of swim trunks as I meandered away from the blanket where the rest of the family lay, at around 11 in the morning. I was fascinated with the play of the surf against the beach and walked in it toward the big pier some distance from where we were.

I was aware only of the warmth and brightness of the sun, the play of water against my ankles, the feel of fine sand shifting under my bare feet, and the pleasant sounds of people as I passed by them.

I met a boy, a few years older. We walked together toward the pier. I don’t remember what we talked about, but whatever was said, or not said, it fit completely with everything else.

We found a dead fish bouncing in the surf near the pier. It seemed fresh enough to eat, and I thought I’d bring it back with me as I said goodbye to the boy and turned back toward the place where I had left the family.

I wasn’t in a hurry as I strolled, again in the surf, feeling larger than I had ever felt before. I had never been so free and happy.

“Where have you been?”

This was Aunt Bee shouting at me. She was angry, but I wasn’t afraid. I showed her the fish, but she grabbed it and threw it in the surf. She took my arm and would have dragged me, if I hadn’t run to keep up with her.

There was Mom, tearful and looking worried. She grabbed me and hugged so tight I couldn’t breathe.

Aunt Bee angrily warned me about letting someone know where I was at all times. Mom just let me know she was worried about me. That was more important than anything to me.

It was the best day of my life.

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Perhaps, “The Soul”…

… or, perhaps, “Sagging Skin and the C Minor Mass of Mozart.”

It started with a day off. Despite being a pensionär, I usually have a full-enough schedule every day. I had not had a day off from my various travels, meetings, readings and writings in too long, so I set out last Wednesday morning equipped only with my writing pad and pen. I had no book, no camera, and no plan, other than to deposit the recyclables at the recycle station between home and the subway station.

My state of mind upon leaving the house on a day off is to have no destination in mind and with no expectations. I must admit that it has been so  often that a serendipitous something happens to me on such days that I knew I would not be surprised if such happened again—but I didn’t allow myself to expect.

And so it came to pass that, among other places visited in Stockholm, I found myself in the audio-visual section of the Stockholm City Library in Kulturhuset, the large House of Culture in the center of new Stockholm (as distinct from the Old Town around a kilometer away).

I have borrowed many CDs from this branch of the library but I didn’t want to focus my energies on searching the bins. I thought of my friend Vasil who loves opera and looked for the first time through the collection of DVDs devoted to musical presentations, including ballet. I chose four albums, including the one shown here.

As I went to the self-service station check out the DVDs I found that my library card was missing. I went to the librarian with my problem and she quickly found that I had left it at this branch on my last visit. It was quickly retrieved for me. There was my unexpected something, I thought.

I listened to and watched the Mozart DVD later in the day, before Eva came home from her job, and found that of the two pieces I was most moved by the performance of the Mass. I was often in tears.

The two sopranos and the conductor, John Eliot Gardiner, are the stars of this performance, in my opinion, but all performers are of the highest quality. I had not heard of the lyric soprano Barbara Bonney and was entranced by her presentation, as I was by that of mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter about whom I have heard and seen in advertisements of her local performances.

Eva’s son Leo visited us two days later for a small family gathering on the Easter holiday. While Eva prepared a meal, I put the DVD on again to show Leo the Mass. He was quite willing, telling me part way through that he used to play this piece every Sunday morning. We both wept, each in our own way, at the sublimity of the music and its presentation. I was struck, additionally, by the resemblance of Anne Sofie von Otter to a woman I loved around 40 years ago. So, here were two more synchronicities.

But this was the most important to me: these artists, the four soloists, the singers in the chorus, the musicians at their period instruments, all of them seemed in thrall to something Mozart had captured (or which had been revealed to him) in the notes he had written. Their persons seemed subordinated, yet elevated. The most thrilling moments were during the duets of the sopranos; no, it was when Barbara Bonney and the woodwinds played against and with each other; no, it was when Gardiner embraced the entire assembly of musicians in his conductor’s virtual grasp; no, it was when the chorus soared and swooped…

Ah, Mozart!

Two days later as Eva and I were traveling on the subway to buy garden supplies, I mentioned to her that the skin at my throat and under my upper arms was getting that crepey old-age look. She smiled gently and said nothing. I went further to say that it didn’t seem like my skin; or, rather, that the message the sight my skin might possibly send to others didn’t seem to be a message about me. We discussed a bit about the body being the carrier for our soul. It seemed obvious to us and there wasn’t much more to say.

Pondering this conversation and observation, I thought again about the performers in the Mass. They, individually and in the whole, were using their bodies but were beyond their bodies. How serenely magical it is that the notes revealed to Mozart which he recorded on manuscript, centuries later coursed through the bodies of these performers and subsequently through Leo and me.

Perhaps, the soul…

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Novel Dissection

”I am writing a novel.”

This is what I say to someone who responds to my self-identification as a writer: “Oh! What are you writing?”

The other, more frequent and annoying, question is: “what have you published?”, as if one cannot be a writer unless one’s writing has been vetted and approved by some authority—or at least the sensitive writer can infer this.

To take care of the second question I have self-published a book of 80 pages containing short writings of the last 20 years or so—Short Stuff: Stories, Poems, Memoirs & Essays. I deem myself as the authority in this instance.

So now I can devote more focused attention to “my novel.”

As the more frequent reader of this blog knows, I am a member of the Stockholm Writers Group, a 20-year-old voluntary association of native English speakers in and around Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, most members are in varying stages of writing a novel, although any writing form is OK for us to critique and encourage. As the least experienced writer in the group I have many examples to guide me in the development of my own novel. Also, there are many books, workshops and articles available telling us how to address the various elements of any writing: character, plot, point of view, voice, setting, rhythm, etc.

There is a natural tension between what wants to flow, unfettered, from the creative center of the writer, and all the writing rules and guidelines, some of which are subjective and conditional, or even dated.

I have written a sufficient number of words for my novel to create a book, but I have not yet engaged in the discipline of putting it all together in such a way that someone might want to read it, much less publish it.

So here I sit, chafing at the rules and taking a detour to read (for the second time) a book written in an unusual way but which has been successful. This is Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout.

This book is seen by most reviewers, including me, as 13 short stories all linked by the presence or mention of the main character, Olive Kitteridge. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and has been a best seller despite some rather negative reviews, especially as regards its form. I like its form; it gives me the courage to write similarly or at least differently from the norm, since I already had begun to do so, willy-nilly. I have a lot of interesting characters all of whom are linked to a central figure who undergoes a significant transformation.

When I was in my 20s I devoured the writings of Henry James and fantasized about writing similarly. Now, his writings are not much popular outside the college classroom and, in any case, I do not have James’s character and background. I must write from who I am and from where I’ve been.

In Olive Kitteridge, the time sense is not constant, but not confusing. We begin in the in present, go quickly to the past, and then work back to the present in the first chapter. Throughout the book the unknown, unidentified narrator “looks over the shoulder” of the various characters, but also presents an omniscient overview, like a movie camera moving in and out of the setting. We are sometimes over the shoulder of one character, then immediate over the shoulder of another. Henry James did not do this. The current rules of writing do not advocate such variability, as far as I’ve seen.

It is a dilemma. I want to write the way that is natural to me, and with a discipline that does not make me unhappy. Yet, I do want others to read my writing. Their expectations must be met; but I resist writing for an identified market, or imaginary groupings of people. Perhaps I am writing for people with no expectations.

My current audience is, and may remain, the members of the Stockholm Writers Group (SWG). Three days from the writing of this essay or memoir, on Wednesday evening, 6 April 2011, eighteen more pages of my novel will be critiqued by SWG, along with a similar number pages of a colleague’s almost completed novel.

I do like this feeling of going on an adventure, of beginning something without knowing its outcome. As I tell my friends and acquaintances, I now travel through life with few expectations. This way, there are few disappointments and often some nice surprises.

See you along the way…?

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Memoir: Date with Girl, 1955

I was 18, in the Navy, stationed at Alameda Naval Air Station across the bay from my hometown, San Francisco.

A different 1934 Ford, five window coupe with rumble seat.

I had recently bought my first car: a 1934 Ford, 5-window coupe with a rumble seat. It had already been modified with a ‘41 Mercury engine, moon hubcaps, spade bumpers and horse-cock taillights. It was powder blue. I was ready to take girls out in style.

I had met Virginia, briefly, through her dad who was a “lifer” in the Navy. She lived with her parents on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. She was half Irish and half Pilipino, a very exotic combo for me, and seemed like a nice, well-mannered girl. She had freckles across her nose and her skin was as brown as a good suntan would be on me.

I was all spiffed out in my civilian clothes when I called at her house just after dinner. We were to go to a movie on Market Street in the City.

Her mother, a small Pilipino woman, greeted me cordially at the front door. She called to her daughter who was on the second level. Virginia floated down the stairs in a billowing wide skirt that ended at knee level. She swirled around the final corner to face me. Her radiant smile, and the brief glimpse I had of her legs above knee level, made my heart pound. I was barely able to get my mouth to work in greeting her.

As we sat together in the movie I wondered how to place my arm around her shoulder, but could only get it to lie on the back of her seat. I brought her home at the promised time and knew I had not been a good date for her. I just didn’t know what to do with a pretty girl, or any girl. I wanted to be a gentleman, but I also wanted intimacy. I couldn’t reconcile these objectives.

I felt defeated by my inexperience and lack of courage. I bought a bottle of whiskey to drink while I drove all over San Francisco trying to deal with my feelings. I finally realized I was going to get killed if I continued drinking, so I stopped in a park and sobered up before I drove back to Alameda.

I still occasionally dream about her, reviving the vision of her skirt twirling around her pretty legs and her warm smile as she descended the stairs to greet me.

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The Beauty of Numbers: A Memoir

08-08-08

August 8, 2008 was a special day in Stockholm. The telephone area code for Stockholm, within Sweden, is “08-”. There was organized and spontaneous fun and foolishness, such as water pistol fights between Stockholmers and groups of people from the north of Sweden.

Numbers have always fascinated me. I became aware of them first, and significantly, in kindergarten.

I would have been five years old to enter kindergarten, so it was probably September, 1942, just after we had moved into the new housing project near the “Cow Palace” in Daly City, bordering the the southern-most part of San Francisco. These were built for the “war workers,” including shipyard workers, as dad was for the duration of the Second World War. The rows of two-story concrete apartments were new and wonderful then, each family having its own separate living quarters, but connected and neighborly with the others. I did miss, however, being also with Uncle Harry, Aunts Bee and Angie and Grandpa. My sister Diane was then just an infant and not much use for company.

Kindergarten was a short walk away from 1822 Sunnydale Avenue, in the Visitacion Valley Community Center. The class was well disciplined. I enjoyed it, especially at the beginning of each day. Every morning, after the students had been brought to silent, standing attention by the teacher, we did three things: we recited the pledge of allegiance, our right hands, respectively and respectfully, over our hearts; then, hands still in place, we sang God Bless America—

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America,
My home sweet home.

And then, we recited the times table, from 1 to 12. This is where I fell in love with the number nine.

Consider the sequence: 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90, 99, 108. Look at those digits! Each set of digits in each number adds up to nine or, in the case of the number 99, when you add the digits together you get 18, the digits of which number follow the same pattern. This was magic to me. I seemed to be the only one to see the magic in this, so I pretty much had this all to myself.

Eleven was interesting too, but only in a way more obvious to everyone else. It was too simple, until after 110. I could not intuit what the sequence should be after this multiple of 11, so I had to actually remember the next two numbers by burning a special place for them in my brain: 121 and 132.

Twelve was interesting too; it seemed a very royal kind of number, very grand. I especially liked 6×12=72. I could see, then or later, that seven of the nine digits felt comfortable inside 72: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 9. This left out 5 and 7, which made them kind of exclusive and special. I began to see that 7 was a particularly special number for me because I was born January 7, 1937. I took seven as my lucky number.

Number 5 seemed to be a sort of building block for so many things in life. A nickel was 5 pennies, and I liked nickels for their size, weight and shininess. There were two nickels in a dime and, magically again, five nickels in a quarter and, wonderfully, ten nickels in a half dollar—an awesome coin with the beautiful “walking liberty” on one side and the strong and powerful eagle on the other. It was sort of like a mother and father coin. Then, there were twenty nickels in a dollar, the same number as all my fingers and toes. I also liked the image of Thomas Jefferson on the nickel; he has such a nice and bold profile. I liked his home in Monticello, pictured on the back of the coin, too. We heard about his home in school.

In later classes, when I was bored (and this was often), I would doodle numbers on a piece of paper. I was always looking for patterns. One day I started to write down number is a row, starting with 0, then 1 and added the two previous numbers together to make the next number, and so on:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144…

I later learned that this was a well-known sequence, famously formulated by the mathematician Fibonacci, around the year 1200 A.D, although it was also in use in ancient India. This sequence and pattern is found in nature, everywhere, such as in the spiral curvature in the growth of flowers and sea shells; and, it is basic to the concept of the golden section, developed by the Ancient Greeks and Leonardo da Vinci in art, architecture and music.

Back to the number 5: even though 7 is my lucky number, I prefer to use 5 when gambling at the roulette table. Here is my usual pattern: I buy 20 chips of low value (50 cents or a dollar each) and plan for a minimum of four bets of five chips each, and a maximum of five bets.  I place one chip on the number five, and one chip each on the four corners of five, giving me ¼ of a chip bet on the numbers  1, 3, 7 and 9; ½ of a chip bet on numbers 2, 4, 6, and 8; and the value of 2 chips on number 5. I let the wheel spin four times, and if I haven’t won any chips, I leave the table. If I have won some chips, I leave the table after five spins. It’s always a thrill to hit number five and win 70 chips.

When I visited Japan in 1956 and 1957, during my stint in the U.S. Navy, I noted that the tea sets I was buying for my relatives back in California were all of five cups each. I was used to six in a set, but five seemed very intriguing to me. I later learned that even numbered sets are considered unlucky.

Over time, I have developed a liking for prime numbers and will always make a point of telling people that the number of their (or my) age is “prime:” 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97.

Now that we are in the digital age, with the number 2 as the basis for all the information we use, it gives me a warm feeling that I developed, in my high school years, a love of the powers of two. I also like the powers of three, but in a more limited sense. For instance, here is what I wrote to my youngest son for having achieved the age of three to the third power:

25 March, 2008

Alex, my son,

It is time for you to be inducted into the realm of 3³.  Do not be alarmed nor try to understand. You may feel confident in being able, almost by autonomic reaction, to conjure the words in your brain and/or your larynx and associated organs: “three cubed;” or “the cube of three;” or “three to the power of three;” and so forth.

These are all, of course, mere human representations of that which cannot be represented by humans, or by any known mammal. The closest one can imagine for comparison is the name given by the ancient Hebrews to the entity in “heaven” governing all humanly observable forces on Earth, YHWH, an unpronounceable set of symbols. But this is quite inadequate an example.

You will have a visitation of the appropriate emissaries of 3³, anon. They will not speak, but you will know. Go with them in confidence and trust. The initiation is physically painless but enormously instructive. Be open.

The rites you will undergo will prepare you for the next 3×5 years of growth and extracorporeal realization.

Thus begins the most important period of your life, wherein you will become eligible to receive the answers to “Life, the Universe and Everything,” at age 42.

Of course, I am preparing for the final rite, to occur when my earthly age, measured in solar years, reaches 3·3³.

Be cool.

Love,

Dad

Left to right: Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Alex Pavellas

Alexander Joseph Pavellas is a math tutor at U.C Santa Barbara

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An Anecdotal Day

It was a clear, sunny Saturday, climbing toward noon as I walked up the steep slope. Boccardo Trail is a new trail, accessible through a gate from Alum Rock Park, one point five miles up from the apogee of Todd Quick Memorial Trail.

As I said, the path is steep – a rise of one thousand feet, with several early switch-backs, one very long incline, and a few final switchbacks to a nameless peak overlooking the southern San Francisco Bay Area from the east.

As I was about to round a lower switch-back, a woman appeared around the bend from behind the high brush, and then jumped back out of sight. I continued for the remaining fifty feet or so, wondering whether I had scared her or whether (as I fantasized) she wanted to surprise me with something pleasant.

Just as I was about to round the turn, she appeared again, excitedly warning me about a rattlesnake in the path. There were other, younger people behind her.

Sure enough, there on the edge of the broad fire trail was a smallish, seemingly comatose snake stretched out in the sun. There was plenty of room to pass behind the silent rattles, so I did, without hesitating.

The fearful group of two adult women and several children between eight and twelve years seemed nonplused by my equanimity. I paused and explained that since the snake was stretched out, not coiled, it could not strike. Furthermore, it was facing away from us, not nervous and threatening.

The older woman seemed to absorb this and a few more of my comments rather quickly then proceeded down the hill. She was not with the others.

The remaining group seemed frozen with fear and awe and ignorance. The woman, well-dressed (as were the children, as if for a stroll in a shaded, manicured and level park in a cosmopolitan city), nervously extracted her cell phone from her fine leather handbag and made an urgent call to someone, explaining in meticulous detail the location and nature of the snake.

This apparently calmed her somewhat, for as I said goodbye to the children and proceeded upward (having had a restful pause to recover my wind), she completed her call and I could see, below, that the group had successfully navigated around the snake and were hurrying downhill.

I reached the 2000-foot peak in good order and enjoyed the view of the Santa Clara Valley and the mountains ringing the southern part of the bay.

After a lunch of cut grapefruit and steak (the latter leftover from the last evening’s dinner with my daughter), I ambled back down, careful not to put too much stress on my almost-recovered left knee, with help from my walking stick.

As I began the long descent on the straight-away before the final switch-backs, a four-wheel all-terrain-vehicle came toward me and I saluted the smiling ranger as he passed me by.

When I approached the lower switch-backs, the ATV returned from behind. I signaled that I would like to say something to the ranger. He is Doug, the lead ranger in Alum Rock Park, a pleasant man, perhaps 50, well-bearded with silver hair (he reminds me of my friend Lars-Erik in Sweden).

After we got a bit acquainted and compared notes about the new trail, I mentioned the incident with the snake. He acknowledged that he had received the worried phone call and was checking the trail (without apparent concern) to follow-through.

I told him of my amusement at the incongruity of the little hiking party with this part of the park, and he responded by saying something like “city people tend to get confused in these unfamiliar environs.” He was too polite to do more than gently smile.

We said our good-byes, and I proceeded downward to the place at the beginning of trail where, on the way up, I had seen some redwing blackbirds playing their mating games in the tall and profuse wild mustard plants. I got a pretty good photo of that red spot on the shiny black feathers surrounded by the bright green plants and the golden yellow of their flowers.

25 May 2002

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Tobacco: a Seduction

The first heavy smoker in my family to die was Uncle Tommy, my aunt Bee’s husband. He was around 65 and had a massive stroke which felled him, one side of his body completely disabled. He was confined to a hospital bed for a year before his death.

I started smoking cigarettes at age 11 and smoked two packs per day by age 12. This was an attempt to prove to the guys I hung around with in Brooklyn that I could possibly advance to manhood someday. This was in 1948.

My dad was also smoking heavily then. When my little sister ratted me out to him he said “you’ll be a man before your mother.” Nonetheless, I continued to smoke steadily. We moved back to California in 1951. (I don’t remember when Dad quit smoking, but it was many years before he died at age 87. Mom never smoked and died at age 90).

Smoking a cigarette at age 17, Navy Boot Camp, 1954

I quit cold when I was 19, in the US Navy. I was concerned for my health, having been born with a mild, genetically-inherited anemia, beta thalassemia minor. I was also, and remain, a bit of a hypochondriac due to having been quite ill as a child and having had a hypersensitive nurse as a loving aunt. So, it was probably easier for me to quit than for other people, including a dear member of my family who still smokes and cannot shake the habit (my sister–see final note at the end).

I started again at age 27. I had finally got into the graduate curriculum at the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkeley. This was 1963. The School was housed in Earl Warren Hall at the northwest corner of the campus. Graduate students could smoke in class! My then wife, Patricia, thought a graduate student ought to smoke a pipe. She bought me a nice one and I happily took up the tobacco habit again. The pipe led to cigars and then back to cigarettes. I inhaled them all. At around age 38 or 39 I started to cough up black stuff, so I was scared into quitting again and felt much better, immediately. No more clearing of the throat and bronchi for half an hour every morning, and much more energy. Now, more than 30 years later, I cannot stand the smell of cigarettes, but I do occasionally find the smell of a pipe or a cigar intriguing.

In year 2006 I read The Importance of Living, a book by Lin Yutang which I recommend to anyone wanting a good read.

…Now the moral and spiritual benefits of smoking have never been appreciated by these correct and righteous and unemotional and unpoetic souls. But since we smokers are usually attacked from the moral, and not the artistic side, I must begin by defending the smoker’s morality, which is on the whole higher than that of the non-smokers. The man with a pipe in his mouth is the man after my heart. He is more genial, more sociable, has more intimate indiscretions to reveal, and sometimes he is quite brilliant in conversation, and in any case, I have a feeling that he likes me as much as I like him. I agree entirely with Thackeray, who wrote: The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouths of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”

Lin Yutang’s essay goes on in this vein at some length before he then explores the virtues of Chinese incense, and it convinced me to try the pipe again. I went to a smoke shop in an upscale neighborhood of Stockholm (Sture Galleria) which had advertised a sale on specially made pipes to commemorate a major anniversary of the store’s business life. I bought one, along with the basic accouterments and the store’s special brand of tobacco. I sat on the balcony of our apartment to light up after more than 30 years, my fingers remembering all the little movements required to fill the pipe properly with tobacco. I felt a jolt when the nicotine got to where it affects the nervous system. It was a bit alarming, my body not remembering this aspect.

Practicing pipe smoking in California, 2006

I was on the verge of a trip to see my California family for an extended period, so I packed the pipe and paraphernalia in my luggage with the intention of practicing proper pipe smoking in the backyard patio. After my arrival in San Jose, I tried my best to achieve the pleasures so wonderfully described by Lin Yutang, but I concluded that the fussing with lighting and relighting and cleaning the pipe, not to speak of the dizziness and borderline nausea, was not worth the professorial image.

Heavy, persistent smokers, all:

John Robinson, third husband to my first wife, Patricia, died of complications arising from emphysema at around age 55, having lived connected to an oxygen bottle for the previous several years. Patricia continued to smoke.

Patricia Robinson, former wife, died, age 68, neck and throat cancer. She had a tracheostomy for the last several months.

Nestor Palladius, my cousin, died age 83 of lung cancer.

Len R., old friend, died age 71, lung cancer. On oxygen the last few years.

Brian B., dear friend, died, brain tumor, age 68.

Recquiescas in pace

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Where are you on the Autism Disorder Spectrum?

On 6 December I bought a book at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) for my 15-hour flight to Arlanda International Airport (ARN) in Stockholm:

bbornonbluedayI devoured Born On a Blue Day quickly. I recommend it unreservedly.

The author is a 27-year-old man with Asperger Syndrome (AS) an anomalous neurological condition within the autism disorder spectrum, “characterized by difficulties in social interaction and by restricted and stereotyped interests and activities. AS is distinguished from the other Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in having no general delay in language or cognitive development” (from an authoritative source found on the Internet).

Further information on the book can be seen underneath the link to the book, above.

I want to talk here about how I saw some parallels in the social and other development of the author and me, and how it leads me to speculate that perhaps we all are somewhere on the spectrum between incomplete and imperfect, and full and perfect, neurological development.

Artemis Pavellas, pregnant with Ron Pavellas, San Francisco, 1936

Artemis Pavellas, pregnant with Ron Pavellas, San Francisco, 1936

I have been interested in the brain, my brain, since around age seven when I felt I had a mission to “perfect the self.” Memory is a slippery thing, so I will hedge a bit to say I certainly had this very phrase as an imperative when around 12. This mission faded away, gradually, to disappear somewhere in my 30s or 40s. I still am, however, “too hard on myself,” according to others.

I now expand upon my own perceived development in response to certain items the author recites in his own circumstances.

From the beginning, I was very good in math and puzzles, but began to lose interest in such pursuits when in my late 20s. I was a “serious” baby and child, according to my mother; she was concerned about it but I was allowed to be myself. As she later told me, Mom wondered what was going on inside of my head. I didn’t talk about what she felt was surely going on in there.

My Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) “type” is INTJ, described, in part, as “very analytical … more comfortable working alone than with other people, and not usually as sociable as others … tend(s) to be very pragmatic and logical …, often with an individualistic bent and a low tolerance for spin or rampant emotionalism….”

So I naturally have as my favorite Star Trek characters, Messrs. Spock & Data.

Mr. Spock /// Mr. Data

Mr. Spock /// Mr. Data

Another one of my characteristics, similar to one of Tammet’s, is that of disliking being interrupted while developing and expressing a thought. I very often hesitate to begin what I think is an interesting, possibly useful, exposition knowing I will, in 99% of cases, be interrupted. There are few (what I call) polite conversations anymore, where a person can speak until done, then give over to others. There seems just not enough time.

While not extremely obsessive, I am a neatnik and find the disorder of others quite irritating to the point of sometimes leaving the scene. My own apparent disorder in things around my home office, for instance, is organized in my way. Shared spaces in my home are usually orderly or I make them so.

Perhaps the most interesting, to me at least, is this shared characteristic: I need people to “make sense.” As an INTJ, “… this sometimes results in a peculiar naiveté,… expecting inexhaustible reasonability and directness” in a relationship.

But enough about me. How about you?

This book has many other wonderful attributes. Among them is that it is cleanly and clearly written. It makes sense. It has at least two love stories: between the author and his family, especially his parents; and, between him and his life partner (he is homosexual).

Above all, the author’s story is a lesson on how any of us, with our quirks, peculiarities and possible deficiencies compared to the norm, are valuable as humans. All we need is love to bring it all out.

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Old Movies, Marilyn Monroe, and Me

Didja ever get that burning feeling in the upper part of your throat behind your nose that says to you “you’re gonna get a cold, Pav?” Well, you’re not Pav, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, I decided to lie low while Eva was at work and Liv was at school, drink lotsa liquids and watch a movie. We’ve got AppleTV so we can rent movies from iTunes for a small fee—we can even buy many of them.

So I laid myself on the couch facing the 42-inch flat screen HDTV that Eva bought so her kids could watch sporting events on a large screen. We get to watch our stuff too.

Marilyn Monroe and Louis Calhern in “The Asphalt Jungle”

I like old movies, especially the classics, so I thumbed the little clicker over a bunch in this genre and watched the trailers Ben Hur, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, and Charade. I stopped at The Asphalt Jungle for at least two reasons: Marilyn Monroe acts in it; and, I am currently writing the “Brooklyn” portion of my memoir of years 1937-1958, having lived 5½ years in a portion of this borough of New York City that was, indeed, such a “jungle”—and during the era portrayed in the film. The location of the story, however, was in the Midwest, possibly Cincinnati.

Marilyn has a small but critical part: the mistress of the character played by Louis Calhern, always elegant even when he’s a bad guy as in this film. Marilyn does the not-so-ditzy blond very well. More about her, and me, later.

The other actors, all excellent and at the top of their respective forms, were James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden and Jean Hagen. The film was directed by the masterful John Huston.

Jean Hagen and Sterling Hayden in “The Asphalt Jungle”

Sterling Hayden became a favorite person for me when we both lived in the same general area. I was in San Francisco and he was living on a houseboat in Sausalito, near the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. I believe I saw him during an occasional visit to this “so European” small town.

Hayden had important roles in Dr. Strangelove and The Godfather, two of my favorite films. My major reason for liking him was that he sailed to Tahiti with all four of his children on his boat “the Wanderer,” which is also the title of an acclaimed book he wrote. Also on board for the Tahiti trip was “The President of The Pacific Ocean,” Spike Africa, a very colorful and accomplished sailor.

Sam Jaffe is also a favorite actor. I remember him well in Lost Horizon as the High Lama, and in The Day the Earth Stood Still in which he plays the character Professor Jacob Barnhardt, an Albert Einstein-like mathematician.

But back to Marilyn Monroe.

She came upon my scene as I was about to turn 17 years old, when she appeared in the first issue of Playboy Magazine, December, 1953. I had been marginally aware of Marilyn, having seen her in the film “All About Eve” with my parents in 1950, and having seen her as a bathing-suited pinup in various magazines and calendars.

Playboy was then, compared with today’s men’s magazines, rather mild, playful and quite literate. But, it was also shocking to show females in the nude, however tastefully, in a magazine that was aimed at the general reading public. Her poses in Playboy reminded me of the Art Deco and Art Nouveau statuettes of nude female figures owned by some of my relatives. In other words, I was not only happy to see an attractive nude woman, but I appreciated her as art, as well. It sounds corny, but it’s true and since then I felt Marilyn was sort of related to me. She was 11 years my senior; I felt she was teaching me something about The Female, an entity quite mysterious and compelling to me since the onset of puberty at age 14.

So, I followed her life through magazines and newspapers and the occasionally movie, just like any star-struck teenager.

Marilyn married Joe DiMaggio a few days after I joined the Navy in August, 1954. I was happy for both of them but saddened and confused by their divorce just a few months later.

Less than two years later she married Arthur Miller, whom I admired but thought too much a sourpuss for Marilyn. They divorced 5 years later. In observing her marriages to older men, by reading of her unhappy childhood, especially regarding an absent father, and by gaining personal knowledge through my own marriage and life in general, I saw the tragic pattern underlying her life. I began to worry about her, as I would an older sister who was following a destructive path.

Things got worse. It was widely rumored she had a one-night stand with President Kennedy, and that she was the mistress of his brother, Robert Kennedy.

One year before her death at age 36, she acted in her last film, “The Misfits,” written for her by her soon-to-be ex-husband, Miller.

She died in Los Angeles under mysterious circumstances, and there are several theories propounded by people who focus on such things, here…… and …….here.

These sad and poignant memories were in parallel to those elicited by the film’s realistic portrayal of life in the “Asphalt Jungle.” I recommend the film as one of the best of its kind, the progenitor of many films in this genre to follow; and, where you can see the lovely young Marilyn Monroe, as yet untouched by the impending tragedies in her short life.