The famous Canadian scientist David Suzuki said during an interview on CBC Radio that when he reached 70, he entered the death years. I like him. The man says it like it is.
When you reach MY venerable age and you wake up in the morning, it is, indeed, a good day.
Make sure you enjoy it.
Occasionally I found myself thinking about the many mistakes I made throughout my long life. I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and with what I knew then, but I certainly goofed. Finally, I realized there’s no way to change the past, so it’s a waste of time to dwell on it.
Tomorrow I may not even wake up. I’m in what the famous scientist David Suzuki calls the ‘death zone’. No point worrying about what may come then.
All we have for sure is right now so we might as well grab it and enjoy every moment possible. I’m determined to live within this plan, so I wrote a little poem for myself about it.
YESTERDAY, TOMORROW AND TODAY
Yesterday is forever gone
Nothing can change that.
Tomorrow may never come
There’s no guarantee of that.
But today is ours to have
So reach out and grab it.
Had an email from daughter Susan saying she laughed out loud when she read the response I wrote a reader who commented on the ridiculous 40 cent adventure I had with FedEx. (See ‘I can hardly believe it myself…’ October, 2020)
Susan often laughs at stuff I say and decided to start posting them on Facebook. If truth be told, she’s as hilarious as I am any day and makes me laugh out loud too. And, when we get together, her poor husband Michael, usually quiet and normal, is perfectly capable of joining in with the nonsense.
Here’s the first in the series she plans:
photo by Chandra
I already had an idea for this post. I already had chosen the images to go with it. It was just about set to publish and — my NEW computer wouldn’t work. The curser was stuck on the upper left-hand corner and no matter what I did, it refused to go anywhere else.
Hail brilliant son Rafi, he who knows all,
Rafi in a vineyard
and who suggested I turn the machine off and on again. I did. It didn’t. Then, because he’s so smart, he recommended I go out for my daily walk first and deal with it later. Good idea.
When I got back, I tried again. No co-operation. It was lunch and ‘beauty’ nap time. I decided I needed fuel and rest in order to face it again so put it off. Nothing. Rafi had given me instructions. I’d written them down: ‘If it won’t work, disconnect the power and then, reconnect it and if that doesn’t do it, try turning it on and at the same time press and hold down Option, Command, p and r.’
I checked to see if I could reach all those keys. Well, waddaya know — I could. So I tried. It didn’t seem to respond, so just before I broke down and cried, I called Apple. (Rafi cleverly had arranged that service for me when he decided what I needed. He knows his mother.)
As I listened to classical music and held the phone, lo and behold, the computer S-L-O-W-L-Y decided to follow my directions. Yeah! Wow! It’s working even though the coloured ball initially said it wouldn’t.
I hung up on Apple. I decided NOT to cry and tried to call Rafi to tell him how brilliant he is. Just because I want him, he’s not home.
Rafi and his lovely Chandra, married 15 years today
Please call him and tell him how grateful I am… While you’re at it, wish him and his lovely Chandra Happy Anniversary. Today is their 15th!
Today I am proudly sharing my son Rafi’s thoughts on COVID:19. I think you will agree he is more able than I to express his heartfelt feelings about these troubling times.
I feel so lucky to have Rafi, his lovely wife Chandra, and my brilliant, wonderful grandson Remy, whom they are raising so well, in my life. (Do I sound like a grandma???)
Here’s what Rafi wrote. I thank him for allowing me to share it with you.
I tend not to pray
I hope, I wish, I ask, I wonder
But pray I have chosen to not
Today, however, I find myself hungering for a prayer
A prayer for the homeless and the housed, the young and the old, the unknown and the celebrated, the powerless and the powerful
A prayer for those less fortunate and for those who have more
This crisis brings us into balance, the fear heightens our commonality, and the unknown leaves us without answers. All of us. Together
As we face this adversary, we are all on equal footing – we sit in isolation, we work, we learn, we argue and love in virtual worlds. All of us. Together
Today tests our sense of accomplishment, our goals and ambitions for the future
For why be earnest if tomorrow never comes? Why begin when the end is nigh?
Why? Because we are in this. All of us. Together.
I hunger for and have found my prayer
It is in the sun that rises and sets, in the blossoms that are born in the spring, and in the “we” that perseveres
It is that hope is a harbinger of these cycles’ continuum
It is that in my wife, my son, and our extended families I find happiness when there seems none to have
It is that we can find community in friends old and new, and in neighbors who leave a loaf of homemade bread at your door
It is from the hugs that will be had and the glasses that will be clinked
It is from the fact that tomorrow brings with it the potential for more than what exists today
Chandra, Remy and Rafi
I tend not to pray
I hope, I wish, I ask, I wonder
But pray, I have been chosen to
By: Rafi Kauffmann
Life during COVID:19
There’s a saying: Man plans and God laughs. If ever there were truer words, find them for me.
My children live in a different country. I’ve been an avid reader forever. I’ve owned many books. I decided if I got rid of them, it would be easier for my kids when I need to move or pop off. If I decide to do something, I usually do.
I gave away books — many books.
Zhuangzi, 4th century BC
Well, I’m hunkered down for the duration of COVID:19 and the libraries are closed. I’ve finished the few books waiting around to be read, so what next?
Going through my half-empty shelves, I saw ‘Zhuangzi: Basic Writings’, a textbook from a Chinese philosophy class I audited at UBC some 20 years ago. What the heck. It had been interesting, so I decided to revisit it.
Nietzche, 1844-1900
What I found most fascinating were my own notes. This class had followed another I took about Western Philosophers, which included people like Freud, Nietzche, and even a contemporary well-known Canadian thinker, Charles Taylor.
‘Woman was God’s second mistake.’ Nietzche.
Charles Taylor, born 1931
In my notes on Zhuangzi, I’d noticed how similar his written thoughts and those of Nietzche were, who came along hundreds of years later. Could it be? Had Nietzche read the ancient Chinese thinker and borrowed from him? Perhaps. Probably. Well, I, for one, thought so….
We stand on the shoulders of those who come before us.
Xunzi, maybe 310 BC
‘The noble person uses things, the lesser man is used by things.’ Xunzi. (Actual birth date unknown.)
A friend recently recommended I not save my favorite cologne for tomorrow. How right she was. Life is precarious. We don’t know what the day has in store for us. A two-ton-truck may be lurking around the corner just waiting to throw me down hard on my keister. I’m using my favorite cologne…
I’ve become aware of my mortality and that pleasures I’ve enjoyed in the past can become impossible. 
However, when one door closes, another opens. All we have to do is be willing to walk through that new door.
Franz Kafka 1883-1924
Always an avid reader, when I learned my vision was vulnerable, I went on a reading binge like no other — and it hasn’t yet ended. 
I’ve pulled books I’d been planning to read or reread for years off my dusty shelves like: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, (banned in the Quebec of my youth but no big deal today); Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ and his very short and strange ‘Metamorphosis’ which I’ve read at least a dozen times, (both unforgettable); plus Cervantes ‘Don Quixote’, (a sometimes wonderfully funny book). I’m still reading voraciously…
Here’s a quote I like by Kafka, whose brain had no boundaries: ‘If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?’ His books DO wake us up with a blow on the head for sure.
Weird and worth reading…
My everyday dishes now are fine English bone china. My former ‘everyday’ dishes are now used only
Well, wouldn’t this cheer you too?
to reheat food in the microwave. I like my fine china. Its colorful and makes me happy every time I see it. Furthermore, no one can ever say I didn’t get to use it. Indeed, I’ve dropped a few and the hard tiles on my kitchen floor are totally unforgiving, but so what? I rarely have 12 people over for dinner these days anyway.
I concentrate on doing things which enrich my life, like having lunch out with friends I particularly enjoy being with. I also get a great kick out of writing this post. It pleases me to share my thoughts with you, so I thank YOU for giving me this pleasure.
Many important issues were covered on Broadway in those 1930s musicals — issues which society would not have been comfortable confronting in other ways. Just as comedy was, and continues to be, used to help us deal with the unbearable, musicals often presented audiences with differing views than their own. Audiences were thus encouraged to look at and rethink their own attitudes.
‘Porgy and Bess’ the first and only opera created by the famous American Gershwin brothers, was written and first performed in 1935. Unfortunately, George died of a brain tumor in 1937, so no more operas followed. The magnificent songs alone make it worth seeing, however, this masterpiece is so much more than only beautiful music.
Eric Owens is Porgy and Angel Blue performs Bess (The Gershwins would have been pleased by the casting)
George Gershwin, 1898-1937
The Gershwin brothers, whose parents
Ira Gershwin, 1896-1983
immigrated to the U.S. from Russia, like my own — for good reason, well understood discrimination, prejudice, antisemitism — and racism. For this opera, they insisted that all performers appearing in black roles, be black. This at a time when opera singers in the U.S. were white only and using white performers in black face was common.
Marian Anderson 1897-1993
Contralto Marian Anderson waited until 1955 to be able to perform in a Metropolitan Opera. Before that, she performed in concerts in Europe.
The libretto of Porgy and Bess, set in 1920‘s South Carolina, makes a powerful statement regarding the vulnerability of the black community’s attempts at survival. All this years before Dr. Martin Luther King came along. Shamefully, the struggle still continues today.
But, if all you want are songs, Porgy and Bess has glorious songs: ‘Summertime’. ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’, ‘I Got Plenty O’Nothin’, and then some. Definitely worth seeing! (I saw the Metropolitan’s Live Broadcast at a local theatre, and yes, all black roles were performed by black artists — as the Gershwins would have wanted..)
I met Bill and Nancy Keuntje on a train in 2017. They’re a warm couple who were kind to this old lady and very worth keeping in touch with. (I think they live in New Jersey.) Bill collects miniature toys and promised to send me some — and immediately did so. He also composes beautiful music, some of which I get to listen to on my computer.
Support your friends when they need you
‘I’m just a blue-collar guy who’s made it to age 70 and knows but for the grace of others, I would be much worse off.’ Bill says humbly, but he’s no ordinary guy. So, during his recent chemo treatment for cancer, Bill thought about all those who gave him love and support during the harrowing experience and wrote this for all those who love and supported him:
.
And I don’t know what special is –
Don’t know why it is –
grateful to support during treatment
How just a moment alone or among a crowd,
Can become the why of a lifetime –
How sometimes it appears…. or just happens –
How the solitude of a whisper within a passing cloud
Can become the dominant essence that pervades and envelopes
That which wasn’t there just a thought ago –
But I do know what’s special –
The value that it holds, the power it possesses –
How it can overwhelm and dominate –
Or be the gentle note a bird might sing as glimmers of the
first light of day appear –
The first breath of a newborn today.
And I do know that it’s always there –
Impatiently waiting – biding its time –
Doctors know friends help
Needing to nourish – to be nourished –
Whether by a congregation of souls
Or an unknown entity X-degrees separate,
Alone and distant within the depths of a shadow
But more importantly, I know the Who –
Maybe not by name or familiarity –
Couldn’t pick it out of a crowd, for the crowd might be it –
But you are there – amongst the throng
As a color within a rainbow graced by its hue –
Unique as a dewdrop upon a blossom kissed by the sun.
Yes, you are special! More so than you realize!
Yes, you are special! More than you could ever imagine!
YES!
YOU ARE SPECIAL!!!!
You can send Bill good wishes for complete recovery directly to: bkeuntje@gmail.com
China always intrigued me. As a child I read Pearl Buck’s books, and later happily studied Chinese history, literature and philosophers at our local university.
Confucius. We also learned about Laozi, Mencius, Zhu Xi, and Mozi, all great minds.
When the country opened, if just a little, after the Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989), I finally visited in 1991, after obsessing about China for years.
Tanks in Tiananmen Square, 1989
Many died in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. We’ll probably never know how many. Our group were some of the first tourists to visit afterwards, so I was not surprised at the mixed reactions we created.
Tiananmen Square, Beijing, where a man said ‘Go back to your country.’ and meant it.
The presence of many soldiers throughout the cities made me uncomfortable, I wasn’t used to so many military men in the streets. Were they following us?
Protests, Tiananmen Square, 1989
I wrote about China being ‘wall-to-wall’ people. They took us to this shopping district in Shanghai.
I’m not a shopper nor used to crowds, and so was terrified at the crush of people in the shopping district of Shanghai. Hans and I just fought our way across the sidewalk to dash back to our bus before it left to park. We sat in it talking as we waited for the others to return.
We think of the Great Wall as one of the wonders of the world, but I considered the bus drivers, who managed to get us safely from one place to another in the insane traffic as the real wonders of the world.
I wrote this little poem to read from the top of the famous Great Wall of China as a tribute to the many brilliant Chinese poets I’d read through the years.
I did read my poem from the top of the wall in Beijing. The many tourists ignored me, which was just as well.
Song of China
Oh, revered Chinese poets and scribes
Who have given beauty in song for ages
Hear these unworthy words I offer you
As they drift softly on the winds of your land
Where my breath and presence
Are but a wink in eternity.
I humbly give you this song as a tribute
To the beauty and wisdom you give me
With your words which will endure forever.
May this little poem, in my foreign tongue,
Please the ears of your spirits, who hover
Around me In the heavens above China.
The Great Wall of China
View from Over the Hill 