Meaning, Less

     There come those moments of clarity when you find aspects of your life entering another stage, when you find that your life has reached a point where what you have is far more than what you need.  This can be not only how comfortable you feel with what surrounds you on the outside but how you feel inside.   For some of the wealthier folk such contentment may come from having homes in various parts of the world or another antique car to add to their collection; or perhaps wealth doesn't matter and you are simply content living in the simple home you've always had (aka Warren Buffet).  Either way, I'll never know what others feel, rich or poor, since everyone is on his or her own journey.  But for me, to reach that feeling of perhaps having too much is as simple as opening one of my closet doors or dresser drawers and asking myself: just how many jackets or winter coats or socks do I really need?  I'm getting up there in age and at some point, it --and me-- will all just become fuel for the fire or things to just throw in a dumpster, even as I try to scream from the afterworld, "not my record albums...those are classics."  It's a fantasy of course, this thought that any of it would matter, or that it even matters now.  "Imagine no possessions," asked John Lennon; "I wonder if you can?"  Turns out that at this point in my life I can't, even as I understand more and more that those "things" I'm hanging onto --those shoes, and jackets, and cherished record albums which I no longer listen to, each as old, well-played, and as worn as my lucky self-- will be forgotten as quickly as my brief stay on this planet. When that time comes there may be some touch of sentimentality from others and then, like a magician's slight of hand, poof!  A disappearing act called life.  For those people remaining, and for the person designated as an executor, a gentle robbery of sorts would begin, a person given access to a house and a life full of secrets and memories, treasures and trinkets (my wife would say it's just junk).  But at some point, even for the deepest friend or family member --and likely sooner than later-- it would all become cryptic, an almost unsolvable piece of a person whom they thought they knew but soon discovered that little was actually revealed.  And that would be only the start, for what else would emerge from the clutter?  As I looked around my desk and my closets, I couldn't help but be haunted by the words of a reader who wrote this comment in the LRB: The hoarder creates a material barrier against a threatening environment, behind which they construct a bearable cosmology.  Similar words had come from Mexico and the woman who was next to me, her hands certainly sore from massaging other people's feet all day, her second job...

      Mexico, home to drug cartels and violence, extreme poverty and Montezuma's revenge, home to younger days of getting tanned and getting drunk and whatever other stereotypes one wishes to place on this country.  But we had seen none of that.  Maybe we hadn't wobbled down the street inebriated simply because we were older, but we hadn't seen anyone else doing that either.  Granted the streets of the town where we stayed were primarily cobblestoned ones so walking back to your room was already a wobbly test for your ankles.  And yes, the tempting margaritas were everywhere and in any form (tamarind, mango, grapefruit) as were the craft beers, and the scotches aged in Don Julio agave barrels (what??).  But so were the many people working hard to just make a living...the mother/daughter team making breakfast platters in their tiny slot of a cafe (their food was delicious), the leather maker selling his hand-punched leather belts, the seller of traditional cookies as large as saucers (they were also delicious and a bargain at 20 pesos), and that massage woman who told me that I needed to "open up" (more about her later).  Memories all...

      But we were back on home turf in the US, our friend glad to see us since she had heard about the warnings issued by the US State Department about avoiding certain areas of Mexico due to increased drug violence (the main warning was for the next area over from us; the state of Jalisco where we were staying had only a "use caution" label).  Yes we had returned safely, but we had left Mexico with more sadness than when we had arrived.  We never felt threatened or in danger during our stay even if our leaving Mexico did come with a bit of excitement for what should have been an uneventful 40-minute taxi ride to the airport but which turned into one over 2 hours long.  At this point I would love to turn our tale into a Netflix-styled scenario of corrupt police singling our car out from a roadblock, or our driver in a high speed escape as guns blazed around us from the drug cartel that had spotted us as the touristas that we were.  But alas, the delay was due simply because of an accident at the airport itself, one which had jammed up the traffic lanes in both directions.  Cars were not getting in or out, and yet the traffic (as traffic to airports tends to do) kept coming.  By the time our phones showed that we had less than an hour before our flight's departure with the terminal still a ways away, we decided to get out of the cab and walk, and fast.  So let me have you picture four things about Guadalajara International Airport: 1) While the city itself is the second largest in Mexico and the airport is the third busiest in Mexico, the airport itself seems rather small; even with two separate levels for cars, there were only a few lanes out* that we could see; 2) unlike most airports, once your driving in, there no exit or turnoff if the traffic does jam up so your only alternative is to be stuck in line (or to head to "cargo"); and 3) where else could you imagine throngs and throngs of people with suitcases and bags walking a good 1/4 mile or more toward and away from an airport...any airport.  But all that aside, the most important lesson we learned from this land of "siestas and fiestas" was that as sweaty as we were when we finally made it to the check-in counter (with only  20 minutes before our plane left), the agent was as cool and as calm as a cucumber, smiling as she told us that they were holding our plane because so many had been stuck in the same situation..."but," she told us again with a smile, "you need to hurry." 

      So jump to part two: we huffed and puffed our way to gate A8 after a quick bout at security (which ruffled through our bags), only to discover that the overhead signs showed the C & D gates to our left, and the B gates to our right?  Okay, I nodded before realizing that there was no sign for the A gates.  "Donde esta las puertas A," I mumbled to a maintenance worker who pointed me to a distant corner.  "Derecho," he said (straight ahead), and I soon realized that we were about to embark on some Heathrow-sort of nightmare and that those A gates were likely to be on another concourse, which they were.  But did I mention the smaller size of the Guadalajara airport?  A quick run down an empty hallway, then down some stairs, and voila, the A gates!  And our plane had not yet boarded.  We had lucked out...the crew had been caught in the same traffic so we had some breathing room (as it turns out, only 15 minutes of breathing room so had we NOT walked, we would have missed the flight since nobody showed up after us).  Anyway, short story long, we made the flight...ta-da!

    Now the sadness part.  We were sorry to leave all the welcoming and mostly-relaxed people.  In fact looking back, I think we may have been the only ones sweating and gasping and worrying at that airport.  Everyone from the agents to the security folk seemed to be looking at us eyes that expressed "don't worry, you'll make it."  On the flight itself there was no grumbling, not even when the smallest bag of cacahuetes (peanuts) dropped down and a single glass of juice or soda was poured for the 3 1/2- hour flight.  In fact, even I didn't grumble.  It was fine, although back in the US we'd likely be grumbling away.  After only a week of slowing down and not being rushed by anyone, I too was losing a bit of my edge.  Perhaps it was the foot massage at the open-air market, my first ever (foot massage, not open-air market).  You need to open up, the local vendor told me, she trying her best at English and me doing the same with Spanish (she was much better).  My wife nodded in agreement.  Then came the tubâ juice man, the tubâ fresca being the whitish liquid from the palm tree, topped off with several spoonfuls of chopped cacahuetes.  It was delicious.  Good for you and your body, my massager told me (I treated all four of the outdoor massagers to a tubâ, even though they had already ordered them). I was opening up...

     While in Mexico we never turned on the TV, and I rarely checked my phone.  There was little need.  We were so far removed from events at home because what was the point?  Ages ago I remember being surprised that in New Zealand years ago, news of the US took up only 30 seconds of their news (it was pretty much the same in England).  The American feeling of "importance" in the world tended to fade once we were no longer physically in this country (and likely the same for whatever country you're from, once you leave its borders).  But perhaps this was also how it was with life.  When retired neurosurgeon Henry Marsh looked at an MRI of his brain (for no reason other than curiosity, he stated, even though once the scan was completed he took a long time to view it as if not wanting to see what it showed), he wrote (in his book, And Finally): I was looking at ageing in action, in black and white MRI pixels, death and dissolution foretold, and already partly achieved.  My seventy-year-old brain was shrunken and withered, a worn and sad version of what it once must have been.  There were also ominous white spots in the white matter, signs of ischaemic damage, small-vessel disease, known in the trade as white-matter hyperintensities -- there are various names for them.  They looked like some evil pox.  Not to put too fine a point to it, my brain is starting to rot.  I am starting to rot.  It is the writing on the wall, a deadline.  In his interview with NPR's Scott Simon, Marsh said: Totally to my surprise, I've acquired this sort of Buddhist Zen outlook.  Well, the future doesn't exist.  I'm well.  I'm happy at the moment.  I've had a wonderful, exciting life.  I've made lots of mistakes.  I've trampled on people - yak, yak, yak, as I discuss in my books.  But at the moment, today, the sun is shining.  I'm very well.  It's not that I'm in denial, but I think, well, all right.  It may be bad news in three weeks' time, but that's three weeks away.  At the moment, I'm well.  Call me naive but it was what I saw in the people on that Saturday...all was right today so enjoy it.  Tomorrow, well, who knows, but that's tomorrow.  Today, all is well... 

     National Geographic came out with a story of how today's 5-year olds will likely live to be 100 but that our conception of "old" age will have to change: Today, life is broadly conceived as a three-stage, linear process: 20 years of education, 45 years of work, then retirement...The teenager was a mid-20th century invention—before that you were simply a child and then a worker.  Today, more young adults are delaying leaving home, delaying having children, delaying taking on many of the trappings of adult life...The French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1970 book The Coming of Age, wrote that most people approach old age “with sorrow and rebellion”, seeing it as worse than death, but de Beauvoir finds an answer in purpose.  “There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning,” she writes.  The 100-year life isn’t about striving to stay younger for longer, it’s about staying healthy enough and connected enough to maintain a sense of purpose, whether it’s found in the workplace, family, or community...the proportion of over-65s is already one in 10 and set to reach one in four in the US by 2050.  My earliest friendship goes back to someone from my junior high; but I know several people who are still in touch with people they knew from kindergarten (what??).  For those of you in your 30s or 40s, this is no big deal.  But if you're Dr Marsh, friends that far back would mean you've known someone for 65+ years.  And the older we get, the more those life-long friends begin disappearing...which will --gulp-- include me at some point.  

     The article reminded me of another piece from NY Review on the rather famous, if often not understood, economist John Maynard Keynes;** said part of the piece: Keynes believes that there is something about our imagination of the future, quite apart from its uncertainty or our anxiety, that makes it vulnerable to the lure of money.  Economic decisions often entail a present sacrifice --an exertion of unwelcome effort, a surrender of time or resources-- for future gain.  Once we determine where the greater magnitude lies, with the sacrifice or the gain, we can decide whether or not to move forward with the choice.  But when money is the measure of the magnitude of our loss and gain, it obscures the "concrete goods" that are to be lost or gained.  We simply lack the "strength of imagination" to resist thinking in "money values" as opposed to "real values."  We also don't have the imaginative power to translate money values back into real values.  "abstract money overweighs" every step in the calculus.  We find ourselves "making unreal decisions all the time," unable to keep in mind our goals and the relationship between goods and goals, and thus whether the sacrifice is worth it or not.

     Stephen Spielberg, in talking to TIME about his semi-biographical movie, The Fablemans, said: The more I was in denial that I would ever really need to tell my own story, the more I realized, Why am I having this conversation with myself again and again?...There are no villains in this at all. There are simply choices, and we're not villains for making those choices, no matter who it hurts.  Actress Lauren Graham humorously tackled this "Hollywood" viewpoint in the same magazine: You might think that we in Hollywood all know who is doing what and can therefore decide what works for us, but we don’t.  The people who know are the makeup artists, and none of the good ones name names. They might tell you what’s trending, but they won’t say who is doing it.  They might call their A-list celebrities “Everyone,” as in: “Everyone is loving the threads.  Everyone thinks that CoolSculpting doesn’t work.”  Or: “No one is doing that anymore.  Everyone is totally over that procedure/doctor/fad.”  I wish “Everyone” would just publish their activities to be studied in some sort of medical journal for aging actors.  That way we could all distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake, what are the results of genetic blessings and what are the results of pricey doctor’s visits, and then decide for ourselves.  Here's why I bring this up, this Hollywood view; there was yet another review of this world as seen by "an ordinary man," one which appeared in NY Review:  This book is just the story of a little boy who became a decoration for his mother, a decoration for her house, admired for his decorative nature.  If he had been an ugly child, his mother would not have given him the time of day.  If he had had a limp, or an eyelid that drooped, and she stopped to comfort that small invalid beside her, it would have been to satisfy her own sense of needing to comfort something -- but nothing actually to do with the boy.  Such began the notes and observations that made up the life of Paul Newman.

Photo of Paul Newman: Glamadelaide

     Certainly my "tourista" view of both the limited part of Mexico I saw, and the limited part of the U.S I've seen, are mere generalizations.  Another day, another hour, another person, and I may have entirely different outlooks.  Certainly drug cartels exist, although I didn't realize that the chemicals used in the production of heroin were/are coming from the U.S., said a piece some years ago in Bloomberg Businessweek: Acetic anhydride is legally sold two ways in Mexico.  First, factories, including those that use it to make cigarette filters, aspirin, and fragrances, buy industrial quantities in tanker trucks or 1,000-liter containers.  Second, there’s a thriving retail market for far smaller containers at medical supply shops, online, and from distributors...While heroin is made in small tubs and vats, cartel chemists produce meth in industrial superlabs.  It’s a purely chemical concoction, involving myriad compounds, and the cartels often tweak their recipes depending on the availability of key ingredients.  After U.S. authorities in 2010 choked off the supply of one critical chemical, phenylacetone, or P2P, the cartels started using acetic anhydride, along with other easy-to-get chemicals, to make P2P themselves.  How much acetic anhydride has gone to feed the supply of the two drugs to the U.S.?  For heroin, as much as 1.2 million liters, or about 1,300 metric tons, from 2011 through 2018.  That’s according to U.S. government estimates of heroin production, drawn in part from poppy crop data.  It’s enough to fill a tanker train the length of two and a half football fields.  And certainly there are those searching to escape the cartels or the political turmoil, those who just are seeking safety and refuge in both Mexico and the US, wrote the NY Times, even if it means crossing the Darien Gap to get to Mexico; in Panama the Darien Gap is nicknamed The Hill of Death (in 2022, some 215,000 made the treacherous journey, 33,000 of them children).  The world, I recognize, is not one of only rose-colored glasses...

     Michelle Obama explained her view to TIME about her phrase "go high": Going high is like drawing a line in the sand, a boundary we can mae visible and then consider.  Which side of this do I want to be on?...These days, when people ask me to explain what it means to go high, I sometimes sense a slightly less polite question riding on its back side, tinged by a natural skepticism, a feeling brewed by weariness and arriving when out efforts seem fruitless and our tests don't end: But wait, have you seen the world lately?  How much worse can things get?  Where is the energy to fight...I want to be clear that this is a process, and not always a quick one.  It can take time and patience.  It's OK to sit and stew for awhile, to live inside the agitation caused by injustice or fear or grief, or to express your pain.  It's OK to grant yourself the space you need to recover or heal...Because here's the thing: Emotions are not plans.  They don't solve problems or right any wrongs.  You can feel them --you will feel them, inevitably-- but be careful about letting them guide you.  Rage can be a dirty windshield.  Hurt is like a broken steering wheel.  Disappointment will only ride, sulking and unhelpful, in the back seat.  If you don't do something constructive with them, they'll take you straight into a ditch.

      All of us see what we want to see, and also don't see what we don't want to see.  One reviewer said about James Gray's new movie: Humans like to brag about the times they did the right thing, but memories of the times we failed to act are the most haunting of all.  Maybe the woman working all day massaging other people's feet and using her knowledge of reflexology wasn't happy; maybe she wished she didn't have to work a second job as a housecleaner.  And there were certainly many in the US where family does come first.  But the difference to me was not so much the people and how they worked or what they felt, but the culture itself.  When we asked our cab driver (taking us to our departing flight on our last day in Ajijic) what he did on a recent holiday there, his reply was immediate...spent it with family, of course.  It all reminded me of an article in National Geographic written by a Ga, just one name for a people who populate the rough seas and coast of Ghana: The Ga, the people I belong to, have no fear of the unknown.  The saying "Ablekuma aba kuma wo" --May strangers find home with us-- is one of the foundational philosophies of our culture...It is an attitude echoed among most of the coast people of West Africa: They travel without hesitation, they embrace travelers; like the waves that wash their feet, they come and go.

     In the end, I can't say whether that woman was happy or not but I have a gut feeling that she was; and the more that I thought of her telling me to "open up," perhaps she saw through me not physically but in another way, a way not of my culture at home.  Those words: The hoarder creates a material barrier against a threatening environment.  Perhaps she saw material possessions walling me in.  Who knows?  Perhaps she was inviting me to look anew at a life of hard work, but one which was more free; a life where the simplest things not only made you more happy, but were the most meaningful.  I thought of this as I drank my craft beer from Tijuana, a coffee-infused imperial stout.  It's descriptive story on the back label seemed to sum up all that was different: The nights draw the soft aroma of your tears; tears that sprout between hallucinating foams; gloomy foams that slide over your cheeks; gazes lost in the dark and sweet abyss; sad faces without knowing where to go; scars diluted in each bitter drink, sips of sweet tears; black tears and loneliness.  Wait, what was I drinking because what brewery describes its beers in such a fashion?  One of the first phrases I learned in Spanish was this: Salud, amor, dinero y tiempo para disfrutarlos. In essence it summed up what I was leaving as our plane departed: To health, to love, to money, and the time to enjoy them.  Open up, her words seemed to say, to other outlooks, to other views, to other cultures...Hollywood may look happy but are they really?  Here, as I left this city of "sweet tears," I felt as if I were leaving happiness...but in a good way, I felt that my eyes had started to open up.

 *To be fair, the airport is undergoing a bit of surrounding construction (what looks like a new hotel) and we could only see the arrival area; other pictures of the airport's drop-off lanes look to be quite a bit larger as compared to the small section we faced when being picked up...    

**We're sort of "in" the throes of Keynesian times now; here's how the International Monetary Fund described his economic theories: Keynesian economists would advocate deficit spending on labor-intensive infrastructure projects to stimulate employment and stabilize wages during economic downturns.  They would raise taxes to cool the economy and prevent inflation when there is abundant demand-side growth.  Monetary policy could also be used to stimulate the economy—for example, by reducing interest rates to encourage investment.  The exception occurs during a liquidity trap, when increases in the money stock fail to lower interest rates and, therefore, do not boost output and employment.  Keynes argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than wait for market forces to fix things over the long run, because, as he wrote, “In the long run, we are all dead."