Just One

   Things have been a bit busy here, what with my brother arriving to celebrate my mother's 92nd birthday.  At such times, whether from vacations or friends & relatives popping in, things get disrupted...exercise routines go out the window, eating habits change, sleep patterns shift (I've been getting about 5 hours a night), but we all seem to survive when it happens.  We adapt surprisingly quickly and before long, once everyone has left and the compacted good times seem to fade, we find that we are back into our routines.  But for how much longer?  My brother mentioned his own upcoming birthday (he will turn 70) and almost wistfully added the hoped for years ahead.  "Say 10," he said, "I'm 80.  Say 20..even 30.  There's no guarantee."  At 92 my mother still seems quite happy, as do many of the other residents in her facility, but who knows how they really feel?  Her world had gone from having little to having a marriage and children and then several homes throughout the country and now here she was 92 years later, back to a time when life for her was encapsulated in a small room with just a few things scattered around...the essentials.  My life would likely end the same, my wife pointing out that my collection of "valuables" (more properly defined as "junk" in her mind) would probably just end up in a dumpster if we happened to meet an unfortunate early ending together, say in a car or plane crash.  No taking the time to appraise or value each item, no trying to get the highest dollar in a bidding war; the goal at that point for whoever was handling things would be to clear the house and move it, get it ready for the next buyer.  We saw this down the street, a beautiful 3-story home, a mansion really, sitting on over 40 acres, one of the last parcels of open land  that had been sold to a developer (where 43 homes would be built).  Within a single day, the home was gone, knocked over by bulldozers and hauled away in chunks and pieces that included windows and doors, air conditioners and heaters, tiles and whatever else was left, all shattered and destroyed as quickly as the cars driving by, each perhaps wondering what happened to that beautiful home but not thinking of the lives that were once inside.

   For some reason during this limited time when chatting and catching up becomes so much more important and enjoyable than my usual reading and looking at emails, I've been browsing a few quick opening letters from editors who try to get readers to dive into reading the rest of their issues, not an easy job by any means.  Get those readers past the flashy graphics or striking words on the cover and then what?  Will they just flip through the magazine like a book?  Will they randomly read a small section?  Will they turn right to the table of contents to see what other stories or articles might be there?  Or who knows, a reader might --just might-- read what the editor has to say about introducing them to what's inside, his or her one chance to get you to read more of what you're holding in your hand (or to buy the issue if you're browsing at an airport or outdoor stand).  At this point I happened to grab a few copies of Fast Company and read about the innovation now (or perhaps more accurately, again) happening in our world. "searching for those that tap both heartstrings and purse strings and use the engine of commerce to make a difference in the world."  One paragraph of his intro went this way: Six of the companies on this year's list are Chinese -- more than we've ever had before.  This was not a strategic objective of ours but a natural result of our bottom-up reporting.  The days of dismissing Chinese businesses as mere copycats are long gone.  As senior writer Austin Carr reports, an innovation ecosystem has taken hold in China that is arguably more competitive than Silicon Valley.  Outfits like Alibaba and Tencent are so forward-focused, even the best U.S.-based businesses have to take note and --with increasing frequency-- they find themselves playing catch-up.  As one source tells Carr regarding the apps Alipay and WeChat, "There is no comparison with anything in the U.S.  Maybe Facebook eventually gets there...maybe."  Another issue saw part of his introduction begin in this manner:...Or you can take a different kind of risk.  You can open up a Starbucks in ravaged and underserved Ferguson, Missouri.  You can expose yourself to ridicule (this community really needs a $4 latte?), but persevere to create jobs and provide a foundation of stability in a neighborhood with far too little of it.  And rather than crow about it with TV commercials, you can open other stores in overlooked neighborhoods, while also hiring tens of thousands of veterans and military family member, as well as refugees.  And guess what?  All this authentic do-goodism doesn't end up hurting the bottom line.  It improves it...If you read only one Fast Company article this month, make it "Starbucks Digs In."

    All of that got me thinking about that concept, that excitable telling to a friend that "you've got to see this movie or read this book."  But if you had to narrow it down to just one, telling that friend that there was one book he/she should read or one movie he/she should watch, what would it be?  Okay, too difficult for our conscious brain (but one apparently easy for our subconscious brain which answers it quickly if one is hypnotized).  Jump forward again to vocabulary, my brother now talking about a course on improving one's usage of words, the instructor innocently deriding the listener with how many of these words would be recognizable to the common reader or language person, and that at the very least some of them should be recognizable.  My brother (who reads far more than I do) tells me that so far he has recognized only a few words, with these not being among them...factotum, Procrustean (think Pyrrhic), subrogation and others.  Of course, such fancy talk might be considered highfalutin to some but again, who am I to say (I didn't recognize the words either, and can't recall running across them in my own readings).  Then there's author Dave Eggers who slides somewhere in the middle as you may see by reading some of his concise reviews of three books that he would recommend: THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles: Every time I read this book I love it more.  Terrible things happen to its characters, three young Americans traveling through Morocco but Bowles's writing is so hypnotic that the calamities are seen through a certain anodyne haze.  And despite its darkness, it's the most humane of existential novels...NAUSEA by Jean-Paul Sartre: Written in 1938, this novel still feels electric.  It's about a young man disgusted by the futility of his existence, but reading the book is strangely invigorating -- great art as a near-religious experience...SELECTED WRITINGS OF THE AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISTS by George Hochfield: This is a fantastic collection.  Anyone wanting to understand the American DNA then and now must read the transcendentalists -- pious, bold, passionate, obstinate, naive, and capable of breathtaking acts of beauty.

   This jumble of thoughts might seem to have little correlation but I think they somehow meshed in my head as finding balance.  There is still so much to learn (vocabulary being just one example) but then again, the simplicity of much simpler words placed in the right order is almost more persuasive and impressive.  And for an editor or person making a speech, such a lesson might be the difference between reaching someone or not.  But our lives are much the same, passing by far too quickly and for some reason the later years bringing in the same reflection of choosing our thoughts and words carefully.  Memories and new experiences meld together seamlessly and our excitability is soon parsed down into that which we find is important both to and for us.  The influences in our lives, we discover, were and are like hands that shape us, forming us into a chrysalis as if waiting and wanting to see what will emerge.  But one book or one movie can also be expanded into one sibling or one life.  The times my brother and I are sharing now are well worth the missed hours of sleep and lack of routine; even the splurge on foods we rarely eat (fattening muffins or cheesy appetizers) seem as natural as the lightheadedness the extra cocktails are bringing (with both of us having experienced gout at some point in our lives, we are more than a bit cautious...and for those of you who have never experienced gout --which can also come from rich foods-- congratulations for it is indeed what I term a "game-changer").  For my brother and I it is a time of sharing and recognizing that our mother can be with us only so much longer and then we'll be next, alone but for each other.  An odd feeling (my mother being the last of her siblings) but strangely one full of both hope and life.   One might even call it a Dave Eggers moment.