January (journal entry)
December 19, 1993.
Sunday.
Time now for
ruminations on the subject of time, but first a remembrance of things
past---the party I went to last night in Houston (Richmond).
I cut my own
hair earlier in the week, cut it very short. Wanted to see what it looked like
that short and found out it looks rather shocking, what with my receding
hairline and the thinning hair on top. And my somewhat
prominent nose and ears. So, I was feeling pretty reluctant about
going to this party. Just going about my usual routines here was difficult
enough, since my hair makes people stare or comment. In fact, the woman who
gave me a ride to the party from David E’s apartment said, “What have you done
to your hair?!” when she first saw me. That was the beginning, but it was not a
bad beginning. (I probably wouldn’t have gone to the party after my haircut,
but had promised—told—David E that I’d take his dogs out Saturday afternoon—a
rather necessary chore.) Cynthia, the woman who picked me up, was with a kind
of macho-type jokester guy, grey-haired. Republican,
hard-core. He didn’t talk much, though—she did most of the talking on
the way out to the party, a 30 minute ride.
The party was
crowded. The woman giving it, Carolyn, was talking to someone else when I saw
her as my eyes were searching for the nearest alcohol station. She kind of
reached around to grab my arm when I was passing by her and I moved her hand to
the top of my head so she could feel the soft bristle there. (I like feeling it
myself.) I barely spoke with her then, but she was ebullient—an unparalleled
hostess I wrote later in a note to David E. I wandered around, got a drink and
a plate of food and started feeling less self-conscious. It was a fun party—the
people were friendly and talkative, and there were a few characters to keep
things interesting. Dr. Crain himself was one of them, dressed in a
business-type suit that was red. (Very unbusiness-like,
but not a Santa suit.) He was friendly, and I was surprised to find he’s
impressed with Clinton, said he appeared to be capable of being quite a
statesman. Mrs. Crain was friendly, too, and very outgoing as usual. These
people, whatever harm their brand of politics may be causing (and I do mean
may, since the question of what does the most harm to the most people is not
obvious to me) – they do have the right instincts and basic friendliness and openness
to give a good party. I don’t recall going to a party that was any fun at
my previous landlords (I lived under them in an apartment at the back of their
house), although they had political inclinations similar to mine and are both
social workers.
There was an
unusual looking woman (large mouth, with somewhat small face) playing violin at
the party. The sound of the violin and her playing were a delight to me. A
couple of interesting people I met were a photographer every
body called George O (George O. Somebody, photographer of Indians in
Mexico), and a woman who talked to me about sex. She looked my age but when she
asked me my age I said she’d have to tell me hers first. She’s 53. Owns an art gallery in Houston. Quite a
sexually attractive woman. Her husband was there, too, but apparently
they don’t keep up a strictly monogamous relationship.
Back
to the idea of time.
To say anything about when something happened or will happen we must refer to
some repetitive or cyclical process, or have imposed our invention of such a
process on the events themselves. For instance, “last year at this time” refers
to the year, an invention of the human mind that coincides roughly with the
period of the earth’s orbit around the Sun. This is our idea of time,
the imposing of the repetitive cycle on events we observe. I need to say that
differently, though. I think contrasting our idea of time with another possible
idea might say it better.
Instead of a
repetitive cycle like years we could have time increasing like numbers on the
number line, not repeating smaller cycles inside larger ones – months weeks days etc inside the year. Linearly increasing time is
maybe a name for that. HOWEVER! Even in that case, there must be a repetitive
cycle, just like we have the unit for counting, we
must have a unit for counting time. For convenience, we can have multiples of
this unit to describe larger chunks of time, but the idea of time remains the
same. No contrast, then! We must make reference to some system of units for
“counting time” just as we do for counting anything else.
But what are
we counting when we count time? Nothing but the units
themselves. There’s nothing there to count! No apples or oranges. Just
seconds or whatever, something we invented to give us a framework for comparing
the “time” of events.
If we
translate “last year at this time” into units of seconds, the repetitiveness of
years is lost. The context of changes in season is lost.
February
Monday afternoon, July 15, 2002.
As Dave Cuddeback would say—does say on his answering machine—what a day this is turning out to be. I’ve been feeling physically very good all day, and in general have had friendly reactions from people. Two people I didn’t get to interact with but would have liked to are Emily and Deborah. I saw them walking Murry when they were at 44th and Avenue F. I’d just turned the corner from Speedway onto 44th, so they were a little less than a block away. Murry looked my way, and had a question mark imaginarily floating over his pricked up ears. But I’d stopped walking before he looked my way, when I began—it took a few seconds—to recognize him, Deborah and Emily. Deborah and Emily kept walking without looking, so there was no awkward moment for them of wondering what to do. Of course, I wanted to talk to them, and see Murry, but I wasn’t going to force the issue.
Earlier, downtown, a couple, a man and woman, interviewed me and filmed me on videotape. The guy was British, the woman never said enough for me to hear her accent. She held the camera while he talked. Since I made him laugh several times, I must have been a little bit funny anyway. He had three questions to ask me about ATMs. Supposedly the company they work for is a consulting firm and was contracted to get people’s ATM opinions. I think the first question was what were the biggest issues about ATMs for me—when I used one, what did I think about them? Another question was what kind of person would an ATM be if it was a person. It all sounded like a joke to me. The other question I don’t recall. I was jokingly reluctant to be interviewed at first about such a mundane subject, and the fun never stopped during the interview. The guy gave me his business card: Pip Tompkin, MA RCA, Researcher, Seymour Powell Foresight, 327 Lillie Road, London.
After that, I gave the Homeless Advocate sellers a dollar, saw a nice-looking black-haired woman I haven’t seen in a while (I don’t know her, just her face, we didn’t speak, but were walking in the same direction together for a block or so), and then I caught the #5 bus (woulda caught the #15 if not for Pip Tompkin stopping me). Then, right after I got off the bus, I saw Emily, Deborah and Murry. Actually, if I’d recognized Murry the instant he was looking at me, I would have waved to him and he might have recognized me. I sorta wish that had happened, but the uncertainties and the chances for a not-happy experience weigh against it as a choice, so I’m glad I caught a glimpse of them at least. Didn’t see their faces, just the sides of their heads. Sorta saw Emily’s face but it was too far and my glasses too weak to tell anything. She is tall and graceful, I could tell that.
--DWT, journal entry.
What the uncertainty of thoughts does have in
common with the uncertainty of particles is that the difficulty is not just a
practical one, but a systematic limitation which cannot even in theory be
circumvented. It is patently not resolved by the efforts of psychologists and
psycho-analysts, and it will not be resolved by neurologists, either, even when
everything is known about the structure and workings of the brain, any more
than semantic questions can be resolved by looking at the machine code of a
computer. And since, according to the so-called ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ of
quantum mechanics—the interconnected set of theories that was developed by
Heisenberg, Bohr, and others in the twenties—the whole possibility of saying or
thinking anything about the world, even the most apparently objective, abstract
aspects of it studied by the natural sciences, depends upon human observation,
and is subject to the limitations which the human mind imposes, this
uncertainty in our thinking is also fundamental to the nature of the world.
--Michael Frayn, from page 99 in the
postscript to his play Copenhagen. Copyright
1998, printed by Anchor Books in August 2000.
March (more journal entries)
Well, today, Monday Feb. 25, 2008, I feel very disabilitated. Disabled plus debilitated. I know not why, except tomorrow I’m going to both doctor and orthodontist, both for the first time. Doc Nuckolls and ortho-doc Jim Moore. I guess I’m just worried about my future, and there’s no worries like body worries. Except mind-worries. Which are related, of course.
And the class teaching ain’t going very well. Two students, maybe more, are missing classes and I don’t think their expressed reasons for doing so are true. Did I feel this way at Huston-Tillotson? Yes, or someway similar, because of two students who were antagonistic. And confrontational.
The feeling is something of a physical depression. Oscar night hangover? Not from alcohol—haven’t had any of that in two-three days—but from seeing all the beautiful high achievers. Oh, I enjoyed it, but it tends to produce daydreams and a sense of failure in a 53-year-old person such as myself.
So why did I put Mozart’s Requiem on just now (9:00)? Because it was there.
Anyway, there are good students in the class, so if not for my recent calculational mistakes at the board—which I only figured out later—I’d be feeling all right about it. And there were the good students at Huston-Tillotson, too.
Now (12:30 p.m.) here’s a question: Why can’t I just step up to the plate, pick up the bat and say, "I’m a man. I’m going to make money and own property," and try to hit the ball? Not just hit it to go thru the motion, but swing a by-God dedicated swing and try to hit a homerun, like a real man?
Well, I like to study, mainly to study physics. I care naught for a "career". Still!
February 25, 1983. It does seem that a legitimate question is: what force, if any, does the electron “feel” in a stationary state? The answer would seem to me to be analogous to the case of a body in orbit around another body, both reacting gravitationally with each other. In the gravitational case, where one object is much smaller than the other, the smaller object is in free fall around the larger object. Being in free fall, the object is not feeling the force of gravity. Mechanically speaking, all objects “feel” forces acting on them except when the force is due to gravity and the object is in gravitational free fall. My question is whether or not there is an exact analogy in the electromagnetic interaction—does an electron have to feel a force in order to radiate (produce photons) and if so, if it does not feel a force acting on it when it’s in orbit around a nucleus, why should it radiate?* The accepted story is simply that an accelerated charge will produce radiation. But an accelerated object will feel a force acting on it EXCEPT an object undergoing free fall. The problem in both gravitation and electromagnetism is a central force problem—the equations are of the form
F = Ka2/ r2
(a = mass or electric charge and in this case both objects have same mass or charge, k is a universal constant, and r is distance between the centers of the objects). It also seems worthy of contemplation that the equations involving mass and charge interactions are mutually exclusive. It seems to be a relationship like the orthogonality relationship often used in describing interactions on a coordinate system (in a coordinate system). Looking at the situation in terms of the equivalence principle, would one thus expect a charge in an accelerating elevator to produce radiation, when it thinks it’s just sitting still in a gravitational field?
*It doesn’t, of course. But I mean if the analogy between E & M and gravity is accepted, why does everyone expect the radiation?
May 14, 1993. Pine Bluff. Wrote about train trip from Austin to Little Rock in spiral notebook (orange one). Mother and I went to see Glenn yesterday in Ozark, at Mt. View Lodge. It’s a beautiful setting on top of a mountain. We took Glenn to Ft. Smith, bought tennis shoes for him at Sears, went to McDonald’s to eat (his choice). We walked around at Mt. View Lodge before going to Ft. Smith. This is the wildest group of characters Glenn has been around yet! There are about 100 of them sequestered on the mountain top. We developed quite an entourage as we walked around in the dormitory and on the grounds. Some of them just wanted to talk, some wanted some money for a coke, some wanted us to take them away with us. Generally they complained about the way their families or the staff treated them, most likely valid complaints. But in light of their own mental illnesses, such treatment is difficult to evaluate in the usual terms. I was glad to see a "Residents Bill of Rights" posted in the manager’s office. The place is rather like what people imagined Ft. Roots to be: mental patients wandering around on top of a mountain.
On return from Ozark trip, I started thinking about time and distance and speed, and realized that another example of exponential decrease is a car’s speed being proportional to the distance remaining to its destination. This may be Zeno’s original paradox, but it seems like, from what little I’ve read on the subject, he discussed halving distances continually, finding that some distance always remained. And that former paradox, of the arrow’s motion I believe, is solved by recognizing that the sum ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16 + … is equal to ONE when the limit of an infinite number of terms is taken ("taking a limit" is still somewhat paradoxical itself, as far as I’m concerned). If the velocity of an object is proportional to the distance remaining to its destination, then it’s true that the object never reaches its destination.
Wednesday, June 2, 1993. 5:30 p.m. Hot! Is spontaneous emission a reversible process? Well, it’s microscopic, and just about all microscopic processes—processes on the atomic scale—are reversible.
Okay. Does reversible mean time-reversible, symmetric in time? Not in its simplest interpretation. (why am I doing this?) Reversibile (reversible) means no increase in entropy. If I use (entropy)(time) = constant, what does it say about reversible processes? Actually, that should be (change in entropy)(change in time) = constant.
It says nothing about reversible processes.
It says, however, that entropy and time are inversely proportional. The usual concept of time is that it increases, but if we accept the concept of entropy increasing and the so-called heat death of a closed system over time (the universe for instance) then a better concept of time is decreasing time—the countdown for time remaining until no more energy is available for work. No energy gradient, I suppose you could say.
Well, this does say something—this idea of entropy and time—about reversible processes. It says they stand outside the realm of time measurement. Which possibly also means that for mechanics (as opposed to thermodynamics), time is nonexistent. Measurable time, that is. Time as a parameter is still relevant, but not applicable to the real world. Whatever that is. (This is sort of a definition of what it is.)
Your (our) relationship with concepts evolves.
12:10 a.m. Wed. Nov. 22, 1995. Hoot owl outside.
April
Feb. 3, ‘19
Dear Frances —
Those quail! I was forced to the solitude of my room early in the evening on account of them. Lawrence told the Judge to ask me who I sent them to and that started it. In less than a half hour they were arguing what month it should be in and where we would go on our honeymoon. So you see what a terrible fate awaits you—I warn you to try to escape it!
We were spinning down the road at a nice speed and only two miles from home when the Packard balked completely—it was with very much coaxing that we finally did get home.
Frances I sure did enjoy the two short rides we had together. I always enjoy being with you. Now don’t think for one minute that I am trying to put over a smooth line. But you can tell the difference between “bushwar” and the truth—I know you can!
Ah! A gentle reminder, don’t “forget” my two dates this weekend. I said 2—not 1—now really don’t you consider it extremely lucky to have those two dates? I shall look forward to this weekend with great anticipation of two huge evenings!
(More than) Sincerely,
Walter
Altheimer, Ark.
--Walter N. Trulock, Jr.,
writing to Frances Andrews, of 305 Martin Place, Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Frances and Walter were married in Pine Bluff on February 3, 1921. Birth and death
dates for them are: Frances: Dec. 21, 1900 – June 6, 1972. Walter: Feb. 17,
1898 – April 4, 1973.
12/24/04. Yes, Christmas Eve. Mother in the hospital (JRMC), because she just let herself get weaker and weaker and finally fell down and couldn’t get up in her downstairs hallway. After I called David Matthews to go check on her, he found her there Wednesday morning (12/22/04). She had a blanket over her, so she didn’t just fall when she was walking—hobbling—into the kitchen. She was hobbling with a blanket over her shoulders, apparently. And fortunately for her. More on that later.
Just now, I want to say this: complete symmetry is like no symmetry (see opening discussion in this journal). So we could say a fluid completely lacks symmetry. Which surely makes more sense to me than the “complete symmetry” alternative. But then what about the circle? Complete symmetry or no symmetry? Well, as a limiting process, from a polyhedron of many sides to a circle, the continuous symmetry idea is surely the one to choose! But I have not even brought this term into the discussion until now. Continuous versus discrete. hee hee. hoo hoo. ho ho! Christmas Eve, friends. God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. And ladies, too. And merry christmas, god bless us every one, and goodnight, too.
7:55 a.m. Retract that: 9:05 a.m. Room 3158 JRMC, PB. Mrs. Trulock is in this room with a Mrs. Taylor. Today is January 4th, 2005. Mrs. Taylor eats, Mrs. Trulock does not. Or she only eats when it’s imposed upon her to do so, or she drinks Ensure when the nurse kindly and diligently coaxes her to, like this morning when Mrs. Trulock would not eat any breakfast. Mrs. Taylor has a large-boned, tall, loudmouthed, overly made-up daughter who comes to see her and shout at her in an informative and patronizing (matronizing?) way, mostly only late afternoons and evenings. Well, I’m going to quit here for the time being, to take off for a while since Mother seems to be sleeping soundly.
Sunday 5:35. April 17, 2005. What I’m experiencing now is a form of self-imprisonment. Not to mention feeling physically run down, indigested, or something similar. Bad! Just feelin’ bad. One reason no doubt is that I haven’t gotten out today, yet. But another reason may be that goat milk. Didn’t feel bad until after having the shredded wheat with goat milk & banana & coffee on the side.
Today, in fact, I’m feeling much like Mother was feeling a lot of the time before she really got sick: staying home, reading, sleeping, watching TV (yes, I did watch about 20 mins of NOW on PBS at around 4 p.m.) AND, the real bummer, trying to find something to eat next to make me feel better. Hell, for one thing I haven’t recovered from rum & cola drinking with Dave C on Friday night. Stupid of me—the cola part, the overdosing on sugar or whatever. When Dave & I had egg nog & rum, that was great and didn’t bother me (last year in December and I guess the year before too). Boy, my bod is unhappy today, though. A combination of things, but…largely self-imprisonment.
Wed: 4/20/05 10:05 p.m. decisions to make—why should I take the teaching job & bust my ass this summer with preparing, teaching classes & labs, and grading? Well, it’s what I want to do, for one thing—although I don’t mean “want to” in the sense of anticipating actual enjoyment. Maybe I’ll enjoy it, but I’m not anticipating or foreseeing that. But it’s where my interest is, as far as I can tell.
Have had headache for 3 days only in evenings…I admit to not eating well lately. Could be another problem though.
No headache tonight, Thurs. April 21, 2005, 10:50 p.m. In the year in which my mother died, I fell into a Large Hole in the Earth. This may sound unlikely as an event. A Large Hole in the Earth? The same year your mother died? You’re kidding aren’t you? Where would there be this Large Hole in the Earth, anyway?
Large Hole, Arkansas, where I was born, that’s where. I got out, but, you see, fell back in when my mother died. My mother was preceded in death by my father, who also fell into the Hole, and couldn’t get out, and died there.
My mother got out but she died, anyway.
I have not gotten out. But on the other hand I haven’t died either.
Okay. Enough prose-lite-tizing. I need to figure out what to do next, in some sense. Let’s imagine I don’t get the PT teaching job—well, hold it, let’s ask if I want the teaching job, and also about other things I might or might not want! What STUFF do I want from Mother’s house? And where would I put it? Well okay, I started the discussion. Now I’m very sleepy and will say: goodnight!
Well, a bedtime thought for beginning of story hit me: Eventually, they will have to stop torturing me, won’t they? People can only stand so much of one thing, then they lose interest.
May
Aside from the periodic afternoon excursions in Santa Fe, one of the few permitted escapes from Los Alamos was dinner at Miss Edith Warner’s adobe house at Otowi—the “place where the water makes noise”—on the Rio Grande, about 20 miles down the winding road. Oppie first met Miss Warner while on a pack trip from Frijoles Canyon with Frank and Jackie; one of their horses had run off and Oppie had given chase. He ended up at Miss Warner’s “tea house.” “We had tea and chocolate cake and talk,” Oppenheimer later wrote; “it was my first unforgettable meeting.” Wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots with spurs, Robert looked, thought Miss Warner, like the “slim and wiry hero of a Western movie.”
Miss Warner, the daughter of a Philadelphia clergyman, had first come to the Pajarito Plateau in 1922, after suffering a nervous breakdown at the age of thirty. Together with her companion, an elderly Native American, Atilano Montoya—known about the pueblo as Tilano—she ran what she called a tea room for tourists out of her home. Her life was simple in the extreme.
…
One day in early 1944, Oppie brought along the Danish Nobelist Niels Bohr, and introduced him to Miss Warner as “Mr. Nicholas Baker”—an alias Bohr was assigned at Oppenheimer’s initiative. Everyone called the gentle, unassuming Dane “Uncle Nick.” The softspoken, mumbling Bohr conversed in stumbling half-sentences—but then, Miss Warner wasn’t much of a talker either. Years later Bohr attested to this most unlikely friendship by writing Miss Warner’s sister a note “in gratitude for the friendship of your sister.” Miss Warner had a near-mystical regard for both Bohr and Oppenheimer: “He [Bohr] has a great stillness in him, a calm inexhaustible source….Robert has the same thing in him.”
…
… He clearly relished the role history had assigned him and he tried hard to play the part well. While most of the Institute’s permanent scholars walked around in sports jackets—Einstein favored a rumpled sweater—Oppenheimer often wore expensive English wool suits hand-tailored for him at Langrocks, the local tailor for Princeton’s upper crust. (But he could also turn up at a party in a jacket “that looked as if it had been eaten by gerbils.”) Where many scholars got around Princeton on bicycles, Oppie drove a stunning blue Cadillac convertible. Where once he’d worn his hair long and bushy, now he had it “cut like a monk’s, skin-tight.” At forty-three, he seemed delicate, even frail. But he was in fact quite strong and energetic. “He was very thin, nervous, jittery,” Freeman Dyson recalled. “He constantly moved around; he couldn’t sit still for five seconds; you had the impression of somebody who was tremendously ill at ease. He smoked all the time.”
…
Oppenheimer continued to preside over the Institute with deftness and sensitivity. He could take pride in his creation. Like Berkeley in the 1930s, the Institute had become one of the world’s foremost centers for theoretical physics—and much more. It was a haven for brilliant scholars, young and old, in numerous disciplines. John Nash was one such young scholar, a brilliant mathematician who held a fellowship at the Institute in 1957. Having read Werner Heisenberg’s 1925 paper on the “uncertainty principle,” Nash began questioning veteran physicists about some of the unresolved contradictions of quantum theory. Like Einstein, Nash was troubled by the neatness of the theory. In the summer of 1957, when he raised such heresies with Oppenheimer, the director impatiently dismissed his questions. But Nash persisted and Oppenheimer soon found himself drawn into a serious argument. Afterwards, Nash wrote him an apology but insisted that most physicists were “quite too dogmatic in their attitudes.”
Nash left that summer, and for many years afterwards he struggled with a debilitating mental illness that for a time required him to be institutionalized. Oppenheimer was sympathetic with Nash’s psychiatric ordeals, and invited him back to the Institute when he had recovered from one of his severest bouts with schizoid symptoms. Robert had a forgiving instinct for the frailty of the human psyche, an awareness of the thin line between insanity and brilliance. So when Nash’s doctor called Oppenheimer in the summer of 1961 to ask whether Nash was still sane, he replied, “That’s something no one on earth can tell you, doctor.”
--Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The
Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, first Vintage Books edition, May
2006, pages 265, 266-267, 371, and 562-563.
June
Tuesday May 17, 2005, 10:54 p.m. In the Austin Library on Sunday I got a bit
irritated—just a bit, actually—with a guy at a computer that was not muted.
People using computers in the library are supposed to either use headphones or
turn off the sound. Well, after more than a minute of repetitive game-like
noises from this guy’s computer, and no one else saying anything to him, I
somewhat calmly spoke to him from a distance of three or so intervening
computers (and people sitting at them), and said, “Can you turn of the sound,
please?”
He was responsive: “It’s just the
computer, bro,” he replied, looking over at me. He was a frizzy-haired,
baseball-capped, big, homeless-looking white guy. I turned back to my computer
without really looking into his face or eyes, and said
after a few more moments with sound still being made by his computer, “You need
headphones.” This I said rather dryly, not looking away from my computer
screen, and not with obvious anger, but maybe with a sense of making a point in
a not-friendly way.
That was almost it, but the one
remaining part of the story is really the main part. When a few minutes later
he finished using the computer and walked by behind me, he muttered, “You
should worry about yourself, not everybody else.”
After thinking about that, I see
how right he is! At the time, when he walked behind me, I was worried
about myself—whether he was going to hit me on the head with a heavy blunt
object, or cut me with a knife. But I realized the truth in his comment when I
thought about how I missed the point in his reply. “It’s the computer, bro” was
telling me or should have told me that he wasn’t trying to make the noise or
play the noise. He sounded sincere. I should have then been able to help him
turn the sound off myself. On the other hand, maybe he intentionally was
playing the sound, in which case I was justified in what I said. However! I
should have realized he might not know how to mute or turn down the sound,
before I let my angry assumption rule my emotions. Thus, yes, in that respect I
should worry about myself!
Listening to
the “Camelot” album I got at Cherry St, now back in Austin, 10:50 a.m.
oh brother what a lost life this is, Thurs June 16, 2005. To become
found, yea lord there’s the desired event. Did I write sometime not too long
ago that I feel like my brain is turning to mush? Since I can’t recall if I
did, the evidence is evident.
All right, the
embarrassing question, but one that at this point is worth asking: Who or what
do I want David Trulock to be? Here is a name.
Accomplishments of various sorts are associated with this name. A family
history is also associated with this name. More family history will be
associated with it in the future. What do I want my part of that future history
to be?
Write now it’s
negligible. And as much of an underachiever as I am, well, why should that change—why
should my contribution to the family history—why should I expect it to—be
non-negligible? Krikey. Let’s stick to the business plans, please. What are they? Nada. Okay, let’s look at plans in general and their
possible consequences. Give me a break. Sorry, that spontaneous comment just
slipped in.
Well, moving
out of Austin has of course become my plan—moving back to Arkansas, Land Of
Opportunity. The goal at the moment is to move into the old dairy barn house.
So that’s a place-to-move goal. What about a place to work goal? Am trying to
get on with ye olde UAPB, part-time physics teaching.
PT won’t pay the bills, though. Oh, and 4006 Cherry St still pops into mind as
a place to live but seems unlikely—twice as expensive as farm house perhaps? I
don’t know. Obviously, oops didn’t mean to say that, there are several problems
with this plan. Jeff needs a place to live, so it would likely happen that he’d
not be able to avoid living with me—or I’d not be able to avoid the prospect of
him living with me.
Later
on that very same day, 7:15 p.m.
Well, Jabo, a person needs to be dedicated to
something in order to get anything significant done. Dedicated
at least to spending time on something. Relativity and its universal
laws message I do have some dedication to. Not enough apparently! Same is true
of electron and spontaneous emission.
The return of
the Zebra pen, June 21, 2005, Tuesday afternoon at 5:20. Yes, in looking
back on my activities and the lack of them, I seem to think instead of do.
Meaning I’m so good at critique-ing what others do,
but what the hell do I do myself. And in reacting to
women I’ve known, I’ve been prone to do something similar, which is to hold
back until I judge them critically—which is a never-ending process. So I’m
always holding back, and also, in general, standing back, out of the mix of
society’s usual choices of making a living and being out there amongst ‘em. It’s no life at all, and it’s where Mother wound up. Alone with her critical judgments. But also—once she was
hospitalized and in the hospice, too—she was not alone, she was somewhat or a
lot more sociable, maybe because she once again felt she was at the center of
attention.
Me, I avoid
being at the center of attention, unlike Mother and probably in reaction to her
being that way. So that’s also part of my reason for all the
stand-back-and-be-the-judge things I write (letters to editors, for instance).
Or am tempted to write. And possibly also the reason I
don’t write other, more creative (and less critical) stuff—avoiding the
limelight that Mother seemed to so desperately or constitutionally need.
Also, it’s a
lot harder to write the creative stuff! 11 a.m. Saturday June 25, 2005. Album
title: My Voice Is Getting Better. Now I realize—different subject—that I miss
being around family and friends. That is, right now I’d like to be getting
ready to go on an afternoon water-skiing trip on the Arkansas River. With Dad and brothers and friends/girlfriends. I’d like
Mother to be included, too, but that so often meant a fight between Daddy and
her. Anyway, here I am with nothing to do, so I’m thinking about when I used to
do things. Also, of course, I used to do things with Deborah, and I wish I’d
taken her up on the offer when she called my Hopkins St apartment to ask me if
I wanted to go to Schlitterbahn with her and Emily
& Eliza. We all went another time, but that call was an opportunity and a
more friendly invitation than any other I can think of.
July
(note: some names that were used in the original
have been changed to initials)
Mon, 2 Jul 2001
23:34:33 EDT
David
That's so neat about
your archeological digs. What special things. I love those old coke bottles,
and to find a piece of china with a date on it....really....I would consider
that lots of excitement. I don't think I live my life with much more
expectations of excitement than that sort of thing and find that things like
that seem far more exciting than what constitutes the norm of excitement in the
year 2001....water parks, bars, gosh, I don't even know what people find
exciting. Maybe nothing considering all the psychological
problems that abound. Anyway, congratulations on your
exciting life.
I received the shells
today and the photos of the disembodied straw hat....interesting though it was, I still think it might have been moreso
to have seen you wearing it! However, it did seem to have a personality of its
own and one could even imagine it just deigning to be worn by you when really
you are quite an extraneous part of its existence...
…
I was called to the
Pediatric ICU Saturday to do an evaluation on a two year old. It was just a
formality really and primarily documentation for possible future police files.
The baby is now dead and died shortly after I saw her. She had been brutally
beaten, more than once apparently, but the one that did her in was the last one
that involved major head trauma that caused her brain to swell and bleed
irreparably. It was an unbearable sight and even as I write, I feel that I
can't speak of it. I've never seen anything like it and hope never to again,
except that to tell you the truth, it makes me want to get involved in helping
the children that are in these situations. I don't know. It really is hard to
talk about it. When I do, I see her little body all battered and bruised, even
bitten, as she lay there unconscious, like a sort of baby angel. Her aura was
extremely powerful. To think of the misery in her short little life is just
truly unbearable, and it seemed she lay there in passive unconsciousness, just
to reveal to some of us that cruelty and impossible evilness really do exist in
this world. She had lovely hair and long eyelashes, and a perfectly formed body
with very sweet baby hands and feet. I will never, ever forget her. Maria Padruza. She was on a ventilator when I saw her and they
anticipated her heart to stop at any time, so today when I went by, I found out
that they had harvested her organs, which seemed some measure of goodness about
the whole thing, to at least think her sweet little heart and lungs and kidneys
could live on. I know in my deepest senses that that child never did anything
to warrant what happened to her. Why, why do these things happen?
Then, as I was sitting
there, I kept hearing the nurses talking about a patient "T." I kept
hearing it in the background, requests to help turn him, move him, etc and
finally when I looked down there, I saw that it was a friend of my T. He and
"my T." went to Lee and McCallum together. They played on the golf
team together and I gave him rides all the time. He had a cardiac arrest Friday
night. I knew he had a cardiac problem. They do not know what happened, but
when I was talking to L. about it, she said that he had been by their house on
Friday and that he, J. and the drug dealer from across the street went down to
the park. I can't talk about this either because it's just making me feel sick
at my stomach. T. H. is one of the cutest, sweetest kids...I rank him up there
with M. He never used to do drugs and always took really good care of himself. I
don't think the parents have any idea about this. The doctors now have his
cardiac condition stabilized pretty much but he was anoxic for a minute or more
and is having some neuro deficits. I went by to see
him this morning. It was pretty awful. The prognosis is unclear. I spoke with
the cardiologist who said that it just remains unclear how well he's going to
come out of this.
So
you see, it's been strange.
Very strange.
…
Well, I'm going to
close now.
D.
ps......someone just called and
told me about the baby being on the news so I just watched it. It seemed
totally disconnected to what I experienced, but I am seeing more and more just
what distortion the news really is...and now I feel that I have seen quite a
bit more of the horror of the world that seemed slightly fictitious to me
before now. I don't think it is possible to convey just how it feels.
--e-mail sent to me by a writer and nurse who lives in Austin, Texas.
(Coincidently, I
found another intact 6 oz. Coke bottle during this month--July 2008--on the
shore of “Trulock Lake,” which had been partially
drained for irrigation. This bottle, reused many times apparently, was made in
Goldsboro, North Carolina, whereas the one referred to in this e-mail was made
in the city where I found it, Columbia, South Carolina.)
August
I
was sitting at my desk looking out the window and daydreaming when I saw my
brother drive by a block and a half away in his maroon 1991 Chevrolet Lumina.
It was unmistakably him. His trunk is tied down with electrical cord due to a
backwards collision he had when leaving the driveway in a hurry to get to work
one day. Right now he shouldn’t be driving anywhere, since he’s supposed to be
at work. “What the hell is going on?” I thought. Before I could really get
started trying to imagine what he was up to, the office phone rang. Lines one
through four were already occupied. My phone beeped and Maria, the
receptionist, said, “Jerry, for you on line five.”
Usually
the callers were wholesale customers placing orders or checking on orders.
Maria sent the calls to whoever wasn’t already on the phone. This call,
however, was for me personally. I wondered who might be calling me. I hoped it
wasn’t an irate customer who had talked to me previously. I knew it wasn’t my
brother. Neither of us has a cell phone.
“Okay,
thanks,” I said to Maria, by way of the phone’s intercom. I picked up the
receiver with my left hand and held it to my ear. With my right index finger, I
punched the line five button and said, “This is
Jerry.”
“Mr.
Barnes, this is Thomas Riley of Jamestown Credit,” said a well-modulated voice,
devoid of any trace of emotion or personality. “How are you today?”
“I’m
doin’ all right,” I said, wondering where this guy had
gotten my name. “How are you?”
“Fine,
sir.
You’re the credit manager there, if I understand correctly?”
I
wanted to say, no, I’m not the manager of anything, but I withheld the impulse.
“I
check references of wholesale customers applying for credit,” I replied, “but
that’s about it.”
“Well,
you are a lucky man. You don’t have to do collections.” Even when this Mr.
Riley said “are” with some emphasis, his voice had what my former girlfriend
Sherri would call a “flat af-fect.”
“Not
so far, anyway,” I said. I did not want to be talking to this man with no human
quality in his voice. Was this guy just totally depressed or what?
“Ah,
that’s where I might be able to help you,” Riley said. “Our company can handle
your collections, and make your credit checks easier. You can get credit
references from us online instead of having to call the two or three vendors on
your customers’ applications.”
In
the year and a half I’d been helping answer the phones, I’d heard some strange voices,
but they all had a definite personality, a definite emotional quality. Bubbly,
pushy, passive, shy, shaky, you name it. Whether a caller's telephonic
personality was real or not, I didn't know, but I could always sense some
personal idiosyncrasies in the sound of the voices. Not this one. It was dry in
a Texan sort of way but without a regional accent. It was smooth and it wasn’t
robotic or mechanical. But it was so lacking in any personable quality that it
was somehow threatening. A serial killer most likely, I thought.
“Well…”
I paused. I didn’t want to keep the conversation going, and really didn’t want
to get into the question of prices over the phone. Discussing money is one of
my least favorite activities. Thinking about it is even more of a nuisance,
which sort of explains why my own credit history is not so good. Ditto for my job history.
“I
can send you some information by email, at no obligation to you.”
“Sure,”
I said.
“You
are Jerry at Celestial Harmony dot com, right?” he said quickly. “I met your
co-worker Janice at the Atlanta Trade Show, and her card says Janice at
Celestial Harmony dot com.”
So
Janice had given him my name. “You seem to have your bases covered, or loaded,
or whatever.” I rolled my eyes at my inane analogy. I didn’t want to talk to
this guy anymore.
Riley
chuckled a humorless, dry chuckle and then said, “Well, when your bases get
loaded with customers waiting for credit approval, that’s where we can help you
hit a home run, Jerry.”
I
opened my mouth and started to say ‘sounds good to me” but before I could,
Riley spoke again.
“I’ll
get this info out to you today,” Riley said quickly, as if he was suddenly in a
hurry. “I think you’ll find it very useful. Thank you for your time, sir.”
“Okay,
thank you.”
“Have
a good day. Call me or e-mail me after you review the info.”
“Thanks.
Bye-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
“This
guy is a weirdo,” I thought when I put down the
receiver. Maria had taken another call and the other lines were still in use.
In the small company I work for, slack times alternated with chaotic busy-ness, and this moment was quickly becoming a chaotic one.
“No sir, we haven’t received the chimes you returned,” I heard Katy say from
across the office, with muted exasperation. I knew this was the third time the
customer had called about the chimes he was sending back for repair. I’d talked
to him once already. A hypersensitive control freak is what he sounded like to
me—not one who used the Internet, though, since he wanted us to check the
location of his chimes using the tracking number from his UPS receipt.
“Oh,
God!” said Maddy, on the other side of my cubicle as
she nearly threw down the receiver after talking to a clueless storeowner who’d
called to complain about her order. “I just want to strangle that stupid
woman!” The phone rang again. Normally, I only answered the phone when no one
else was available, but Maria was still tied up and Maddy
was not in a good mood.
“You
want me to get that, Maddy?” I asked.
“Thanks,
Jerry,” she said, standing up and looking at me over the cubicle wall. Leaning
in towards me she whispered loudly, “This has been one fucked-up morning. I
need my smoke break.” She picked up her purse and headed for the door to the
parking lot.
I
picked up the receiver. “Celestial Harmony,” I said as musically as possible.
“May I help you?”
My
story is basically the story of western civilization. I’ve been in a long
downward slide for a number of years. Right now I’m living with my brother, who
drives me crazy with practically everything he does, and with a friend of mine
who drives me crazy with his TV watching, which he adamantly tries to impose on
me. “Hey, you’ll like this show,” he
says when I try to walk through the den and one of the numerous indistinguishable
CSI series or some other murder show is on. Or he may be watching Modern
Marvels on the History Channel and he’ll say, “Hey, check this out. This is
about physics.”
Once
upon a time, in my earlier life, I had a potential career as a physics
professor. And I had a potential wife, and potential stepchildren I admired. I
think the admiration was not mutual, but it doesn’t matter. All this potential-ness left me by the wayside almost to the day with the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
I just wonder how the hell anybody finds a job that doesn’t drive him
crazy, or finds a roommate or a wife who doesn’t drive him crazy. The
possibilities seem pretty slim to me. Nothing seems to be any better than
anything else as far as being happy with the situation I’m in at the moment.
Whatever it is, I’m one step away from ending it and trying something else. Which is not bad if you’re,
say, 22 or 23 years old. I’m 39 years old. And I feel more unsettled now
than when I was 22 or 23. I wonder fairly often these days whether it’s the
situation I’m in that’s driving me crazy or if I’m really the crazy one.
I
have to admit there are some good days, when most people seem to be friendly
and there’s mostly laughing and joking going on in the office. Today is not one
of those days. Lauren from Zen Gardens in Sedona, Arizona is on the phone.
“To
whom am I speaking?” Lauren asked, in a mock-sincere, low-pitched voice after
identifying herself. By the sound of her voice and from dealing with her
previous orders, I think of her as a bitch in New Age clothing. I could be
wrong, of course.
“This
is Jerry. How are you, Lauren?”
“Oh,
just wonderful!
I’m so glad I got you on the phone, Jerry. You’re always so helpful.” Meaning
she doesn’t get along with the women who take orders—Maddy
and Katy.
“Thanks,”
I said, anticipating her expectation that I will do something out of the
ordinary for her.
“I
have a customer who loves your Mars chimes. I tried to talk him into buying a
Jupiter or Saturn, but he wants the Mars, at least to start with. But I don’t
have any in stock. Can I order just one?”
The
minimum order for wholesale customers is $200, which she knows. The Mars tuning
is one of the smaller chimes and is $115 wholesale. So it’s under minimum.
“Well,
if you order two, you’d be above minimum. Can you do that?”
“I just
got over $800 worth of chimes, and haven’t sold any yet, so I was hoping …
well, this order and my last one together would average over $200, right?” I’d
never thought of using the average. It momentarily seems like a sensible idea,
and I’m grudgingly respectful that she is smart enough to think of it, but I’m
also pissed even more because she’s finagling so well.
“I’d
have to ask the owner about that, and call you back.”
“Well,
I didn’t think it would be a problem, since I just had that big order. I can
wait if you want to ask now.”
“Unfortunately,
she isn’t here right now.” Just as I said that I realized there was another way
to handle the problem. Most storeowners would have thought of it first, and not
even asked for an under-minimum order. “How about drop
shipping the chimes to your customer?”
“Isn’t
there an extra charge for that?”
“Five
dollars.”
She has used drop shipping before. She’s also sold plenty of chimes in the
past, and will undoubtedly sell the ones she just received. Why is she playing
this game? Is this Zen and the Art of Making People Do
Special Favors For You?
There’s
a pause while she considers the possibility of calling back if she doesn’t
place the order now. She might get Maddy or Katy
instead of me. At least that’s what I imagine is going through her mind.
“Okay,
Jerry, let’s go ahead and do it as a drop ship, so we can get this guy’s chimes
to him in a timely fashion.” Her voice had lost its faux-sincerity. She sounded
scornful and authoritative, and I had a brief fantasy about being in bed with
her. I imagined she was a skinny, blue-eyed blonde, with good-sized breasts.
She was on top of me and her thin Zen fingers were around my throat.
“Okay,
Lauren. I just need his name and address, and we’ll get the order out today.”
After
she got the man’s information and relayed it to me, she said “Ciao” in a cutesy
sort of way, her signature sign-off. I finished writing up the order, then
stood up and stepped over to Katy’s desk. She was still talking to the
hypersensitive control freak.
“Your
chimes are in Dallas, sir. They should be here tomorrow.” Pause. “It’s about a
five hour trip from Dallas.”
Katy
is a singer/songwriter and guitar player, somewhat temperamental. I have to
wonder why she allows herself to be loaded down with duties at work, including
typing in all the handwritten orders. Does she feel more empowered, more in
control? She complains regularly about the amount of work she has to do, but if
there’s a suggestion that anybody else might take over some of the work, she
starts complaining about Janice letting somebody take work away from her.
Besides taking orders over the phone and typing up orders, she was also in
charge of chime repair.
“I’ll
give you a call when we get the chimes. Thank you, sir.” Katy hung up the phone
but didn’t look up at me. I stood beside her desk and waited for her to finish
jotting down info from the call. When she looked up at me I said, “I hope that
guy doesn’t call again today, but he probably will.”
“I’m
not talking to him again,” Katy said, shaking her head. “If I answer the phone
and it’s him, I’m putting him on hold and somebody else is going to have to put
up with his petty bullshit.”
“I
don’t blame you,” I said, although I actually did blame her for not being able
to emotionally handle the guy.
She
looked at the order in my hand and said, “Is that for me?”
“Yep,
a drop ship, Zen Gardens,” I said as I handed her the piece of paper. She
nodded, and said “Okay, thanks.” Then I headed back to my cubicle to deal with
the credit reference calls I’d been putting off.
--David
W. Trulock, © 2008
September
10:15 a.m. Mon. Sept. 10, 2001. “Good to know you,” I said as I left my appointment with Dr. Haber today, a few minutes ago. We were parting ways and he’d said something about hoping to see my byline in print. I thanked him. I wish I’d just said “Best wishes to you” instead of “Good to know you.” It was like I was only thinking of me and not about him, but actually in counseling that’s how I do feel. Anyway, I feel knocked off balance now, after coming out of counseling, like I felt knocked off balance going into counseling.
Dr. Haber and I talked about commitment versus possibility—infinite possibility. Commitment to a job, commitment to a person. He said I should let people know at any company I work for that they should threaten to fire me every six months in order to keep my interest in the job. It was a joke, but hit the mark, not only about jobs but about women, too. I told him about my sudden romantic interest in women in my life once I think they are interested in another man. One thing he said was that this could just be an external push or prod that opens up my latent feelings. He also said this happens fairly often. So, why were my feelings latent, if that’s what they were? Well, seeing other possibilities in a mate is one reason, which is the same as not being willing to make a commitment to the woman I’m with—until a threat (he called it) arises. So, following on the job example, I’d need a wife who seems to be interested in a new man every six months in order to keep me committed. This is my flaw apparently. Why?
I said maybe it’s because I saw the problems my parents had and I didn’t want to grow up and get into that kind of war of wills with a woman. I have certainly not had the visions of home and family that some or most people seem to have. I also said maybe I’m avoiding that kind of situation and the career situation by just not growing up! It seems true.
8 p.m. approximately. Waiting on Chance to call and pick me up to go to a party. Thank goodness for the few people like him and Rodney. I have finished the blue notebook, filled it up already. Lots to write about, but it all is in the same vein: rejection, and closed doors:
I quit the PhD program. It was starting to make me feel sick, both trying to do the Au assignments and trying to teach these stupid presentation-based labs.
D______ ended our communication.
Old Moorhead hasn’t responded to me since I wrote him a reminder like he asked me to. He’s the graduate coordinator at the U of Western Ontario, where I applied recently.
3 routes blocked off …
Sept. 11, 2001. 9:30 a.m. The party was an awful bore. Mostly programmer geeks. The host was affable, but was kept busy with his buddies. I mostly sat back and tried to act like I was interested, but with nobody talking to me, it was not easy to be interested. Well, it wasn’t that. It was the nature of their chosen subjects, like going out and getting drunk and being proud of who got the drunkest. They just tried to maintain a high level of cleverness, like such geeky, immature people usually do. I’m not interested in that, or my interest quickly wanes. The only time I said much was to disagree with an obnoxious fat guy who disparaged Birmingham, the city in Alabama. I immediately said, “I love Birmingham!” Then I mentioned having a brother who lives there. The guy backed off and said maybe he’d been in the wrong part of town. Then he began quizzing me on where I was going when I left Columbia, and where I was from. He’s some kind of preacher, Chance says. Lord help us.
I realized yesterday that my lab assistant career at ACC started 10 years ago. So I’ve been doing this physics lab stuff for 10 years, ending it now in a quite dramatic fashion at an inopportune time, but with history on my side. It was September 10th or 9th, or 12th, I think, that I met Dave Cuddeback and got hired at ACC in 1991. Everything went downhill from there! No, not really. The master’s degree and teaching and learning experience I got at Southwest Texas State were good. Other things, like ITT and Huston-Tillotson, were good for character building, even though I can’t say I enjoyed doing them.
Now, what to do?
11:45 a.m. I just an hour and a half ago heard about World Trade Center attack. My stomach feels queasy.
11:40 p.m. It’s been like a disaster movie today, with the scenes on TV screens and in the extra edition of the newspaper of the hijacked or commandeered airliners crashing into the World Trade Center. Lord, Lord, Lord, I pray for those who suffered and are still suffering because of this hatred of America and its citizens. Everyone is guessing the attack is the work of Osama Bin Laden. Maybe so, maybe not. Probably so. It is extreme and stupid hatred, ignorant hatred. Killing people is so stupid and ignorant.
Everyone wonders what lies ahead—war with Afghanistan, retaliations, more terrorist attacks?
A lot of people woke up early this morning to another seemingly normal day, only to find out it was their last day of life on earth. Some died without knowing what happened, but those were only the ones hit by the explosion of the first plane. The film clips are like movies.
…
6:25 a.m. Sept. 14. In order to have presentness, the object must be breaking.
…
9:30 a.m. Tuesday, 9/18/01, one week after the NYC and DC destruction events. [The following was written with a fictional character in mind.] I’m a critic, and I can tell you it’s a sad business to be in. I can’t have a lasting intimate relationship. I’ve tried. The women I’ve been involved with finally get fed up with my suggestions for correcting their behavior. I am simply imprisoned by the power of my own control over language, a power over which I apparently have no control.
Things would be better if I actually made money at being a critic, but the fact is I’m an amateur. Professionals are defined by having income from their chosen profession, and I don’t fit that definition. In the world of adults, people are pretty much defined by how they make their money. It’s absurd and patently superficial and we know it, but we can’t deal with our deeper selves on a daily hi-how-are-you basis. The dependence on the superficial is a coping mechanism. If it works for you, fine. It doesn’t work for me, though. A critic is out to unravel the mystery of everything and then knit it back together as truth. A scientist is a critic at heart, one who has learned to focus his attention on a particular mystery. I don’t know if novelists and artists are critics. What do they do, exactly? (See what I mean?) You read a novel or look at a painting and you feel elements of truth but at the same time the mystery deepens.
Early afternoon, same day. One thing that’s given me pleasure and hope in these days of transition is watching the progress on Amazon’s website of the shipment of two videos I sent Travis and Emily, “The Natural History of the Chicken” and a documentary called “Air Force One.” There was some frustration on my part Friday night and Saturday, when I checked the package’s progress using Arch’s computer in Birmingham. I found that the package had arrived in Austin, but didn’t get delivered Saturday, which I was hoping for, although the promised delivery time was 2 business days. I checked yesterday from the LR public library and found no progress since Saturday and was further frustrated. But today I checked and found the package was delivered yesterday at 5:45 p.m. Location: porch. I wonder who came out and found it. It’s comforting, hopeful, and makes me happy to think about them receiving the package and watching the videos.
September 2007. Here I am watching over the city’s two free dumpsters, a way station for unwanted household items on their way to the landfill. People bring their old furniture and general household garbage here. Oh, yeh, I’m also supposed to be the king of the HHW recycling for the city, but I have not generated any new business since starting this job six months ago. Sloughing off to Buffalo. Non-paralegal. I am so stuped. Oh I could tell a story to make your ears ring, if I took time but I don’t obviously.
Mainly I was thinking. About the old mattresses brought here. Perhaps by people whose parents conceived them on that very mattress in the early morning hours of a rainy Saturday 34 years ago. Now the mattress becomes a piece of plain old trash, the landfill takes it and it is squeezed in and surrounded by garbage, by smelly, disgusting, formerly cherished or at least paid-for items and organic detritus. Garbage. The former clean-sheeted bed of love goes to the dump unceremoniously, without any historical marker significance at the entrance to the dump. Forgotten and relegated to dark offensive dampness and decay for the duration of its ruined mattress existence.
--DWT,
selected journal entries, plus one stray scrap-paper note.
“We find out where conditions are the worst—the places others are not going—and that’s where we want to be.”
--Nicolas de Torrenté, Executive Director, Doctors Without Borders (quotation from wall map in my office). www.doctorswithoutborders.org
Others in the
administration worried that the President’s lawyers were shirking their
obligations to uphold the laws. “Lawyers have to be the voice of reason and
sometimes have to put the brakes on, no matter how much the client wants to
hear something else,” David Bowker, a former top
State Department lawyer said. “Our job is to keep the train on the tracks. It’s
not to tell the president, ‘Here are the ways to avoid the law.’” He went on,
“There is no such thing as a non-covered person under the Geneva Conventions.
It’s nonsense. The protocols cover fighters in everything from world wars to
local rebellions.”
--Jane
Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the
War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, page 123. © 2008
You can beat us with wires
You can beat us with chains
You can run out your rules
But y’know you can’t outrun the history train
I’ve seen a glorious day …
--Paul Simon, “Peace Like A River” © 1971.
OCTOBER (journal entries from 2004)
10/13
night.
Marsh was out on the porch with Wooley on Monday when
I arrived at 10:45 or so. Surprise! I had wine, too, for the first time in ten
months—I drink now, but not alone (yet) or habitually as before and so don’t
bring alkehol home with me. Except in this case Greg
had told me Boss was put to sleep Friday, and he said drink a toast to him, so
thusly and so-ly, I bought the wine. Thank goodness,
I even had someone to drink it with!
Now what? Ag. I just start writin’ and
forget it all. All what I had on my mind about startin’
my new life, and why. How about how? Yeh, different story there. Big lots.
Goodnight at midnight.
Now it’s 12:35
a.m. Oct. 15.
I must say: David! David! David! This ain’t no way to get the bills paid! I mean paid off. It ain’t working even by a long shot, not with IRS payment, dummy!
Get thee to a higher payin’ job, Bob. Try a plan,
timed somehow like the timing you do sometimes when you write (which ain’t often!) or are working on something and say to
yourself you’ll have it done by such-and-such a time. That always helps the flow.
So, by Nov. 15, a
month from now, I will have a new job. Where? don’t
know but it could be anywhere! # 1 need to pay, or start getting ahead, on the
CC payments, blast it to hell. Get off the unrealistic
ass, chump.
So, then, after laying down and getting back up, what is realistic? There
are many things to deal with here. Start with basics—okay, already looked at
basic thing, which is money and making it. Or is that two things? Well, if so,
they surely seem connected, as I’ve said on recent pages herein. Start with
even more basic stuff — life and death. There. That’s better. I’m 50 freakin’ years old and am thinking or not-thinking like a
recent high-school graduate. On the other hand, I’ve been feeling pretty dang
terrible the last two evenings, and afternoons even. Like I’m sick. Maybe I am. I need some kind of perspective,
anyway, and what I’ve got now isn’t doing it.
Where do I want
to be, to live, with whom, and doing what exactly? Austin is the best place
I’ve lived. But what about the numerous places I haven’t lived? Yeh, yeh, these are unknowns.
With whom is also unknown. But, yes,
someone, and kids even if I was with the right someone. Doing what? Writing the physics book, writing stories, teachin’
physics.
So I put in an
application to teach at the AC of C. Part-time. Ack.
Not gonna pay bills better, probably. Have to wait
& see. But if I plan to quit Mosic uf the Sphereys in November,
well, that just ain’t gonna
work, the P.T. teaching. So . . .
Also, what about
plans for Mother, for the farm, for when Mother’s health fails or she dies, and
for the future of the farm? Certainly to make some plans for. What about other
avenues for paying off bills—selling the farm, getting a grant of some kind?
Now I’m getting somewhere. Also changing from 2nd
to 1st person, but whatever. Write!
Friday 9:40
p.m. 10/15/04. Still at 3116-B Grandview St. How do I change things?
I’m now thinking on the same old subject, but am considering how to change the
daily routine, AND why I want to write what I want to write. And also, whether
I really want the changes that might result from writing some of the stuff I
want to write. And one more thing: Buying bulk means having more bulk . . . Now
about the writing question. I of course want to change the world by what I
write, at least in the case of the op-ed pieces I want to write. But how will
that change things for me? Do I want those changes, which are at least partly
predictable (loss of some privacy, for instance)?
Sunday
10/24/04 11:35 a.m.
Physics today: okay. Oppenheimer says on p. 128 of Atom & Field essay in
Atom & Void book, “not just the light and the electron, but the slits
themselves have the character of being represented by a wave field.” Very good
J.R.! Usually, nobody says much about the holes.* I have certainly been
concerned about them and was just thinking about them before picking up the
A&V book to start reading again. What I was thinking: in setting up the
experiment, the size of the holes must be part of the criteria specified. Also their separation. More on this story later . . .
The plot shifts
now to “the probability of finding the particle.” The square of the amplitude
of the wave function determines the probability of finding the electron or
light quantum. This seems to be a circular sort of logic in that by putting the
particles through the slits, you are “finding” them.
But JRO explains
this apparent discrepancy (apparent to me …) by discussing orbits versus
stationary states: “If you have an atom, the stationary states are not orbits.
To produce orbits you must take a whole mass of stationary states and build up
the waves in a suitable manner by adding the waves of stationary states. So an
orbit is complementary to a stationary state; you can realize one or the other,
but if you do one, the other is foreclosed.”
*or
slits—same ideer.
7:45 p.m. that
very same day: Another
thing: When you transform to the rest frame of an electron passing
through—before it passes through—a hole, well, whaddaya
see? A hole comin’ at ya! Not an a-hole we can hope,
but, really, I guess the two holes or the diffraction grating or whatever comin’ at ya. Boom! Stop the
frame, go back, follow another electron. Does it just
sail right through when it does go through? I doubt it! The holes or slits
aren’t that big (allright, so how big is the de
Broglie wave of the hole compared to the particle de Broglie wave?). Look it
up! No wavelength if no velocitiy, bug. λ = h/mv, doc. later.
2:27 a.m. or
1:27 (DST over) 10/31/04 Sunday! Let’s finish the thought thought
of earlier in the evening: DB be bad, yes, but DT be
bad, too, or would not have stayed, been interested, etc. Jerkovian!
11:20 p.m. Indeed, DT be possibly the baddest type of
bad, the person who cares about humanity generally but not about a loved one in
a loving way. A generalist!
Interesting
article in NYTimes “Modern Love” column today—a
column I haven’t seen before. It’s about getting dumped and not being able to
accept it. I could relate certainly.
10:54 morning
Nov. 1, 2004 jeez! Time
passes differently for me than it seems to for other people. The past clings to
me and the extemporaneous passage of time just doesn’t seem to matter. The
clinginess is not quite like that of the notorious kudzu vine, but is more like
English ivy instead. The older I get the more the past covers me up and makes
me have that ivy covered quality.
November
On November
22, 1963, Oppenheimer was sitting in his office, working on a draft acceptance
speech for the December 2 White House ceremony, when
he heard knocking on his outer office door. It was Peter, who said that he had
just heard on his car radio that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
Robert looked away. At that moment, Verna Hobson dashed in, exclaiming,
"My God, did you hear?" Robert looked at her and said, "Peter
just told me." When others arrived, Robert turned to Peter and asked his
twenty-two year old son if he’d like a drink. Peter nodded, and Robert walked
over to Verna’s large walk-in closet, where he knew some liquor was kept. But
then Peter observed that his father just stood there, "his arm hanging
down by his side, fourth finger repetitively rubbing his thumb, gazing downward
at the little collection of liquor bottles." Finally, Peter mumbled,
"Well, never mind, then." As they walked out together, past his
secretary’s desk, Verna Hobson heard Robert say, "Now things are going to
come apart very fast." Later, he told Peter that "nothing since
Roosevelt’s death had felt to him like that afternoon." For the next week,
Oppenheimer, like much of the nation, sat in front of a television and watched
the tragedy further unfold.
--Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, first
Vintage Books edition, May 2006, pages 575 and 576.
We shall overcome, we shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe
We shall overcome some day
--from the song "We Shall Overcome." See the Library of
Congress and Wikipedia
sites for more info.
Give this to
Moma
Moma how are you
doing I hope you’re doing alright I’m just writing you to see if you watching
yourself out there cause you are sick. Right Our family
are going through a whole lot right now. And feel like your boyfriend is going
to be one of the biggest you feel like you got something going on Nall you got a problem. Watch and see you already no it you hate to admitt it. I
Bet he got a whole lot of shit going on between you and them
other women around that neighborhood. That boy can’t
do shit for you at all. He better be glad I’m locked up because his ass will be
missing around Pine Bluff. That’s all I got to say but I love you Moma I hope things get on the right track with our family.
I hope you gave — Sisco my keys to the car So he can put my shit up. Nee Nee
is suppose to come and see me so y’all make sure y’all come & see me I’m
going to call Sisco & see what’s going on so go
see him before y’all come see me y’all come kind of early. So you can do that
for me we don’t need nobody so you no what you need.
Tell Ked to get my medicine to OK Love you.
--handwritten
note filling up one side of a sheet of notebook paper, written in neat cursive
handwriting, found last month on the parking lot of the Recycling Center at
1600 Pennsylvania Street in Pine Bluff.
...but of course I'm still writing in
the reality of January 2007, today being the 21st, a Sunday without sun
following many days without sun and with mostly rain and last night it sounded
like it was sleeting. Time 11:26 a.m., temp 46 degrees, high predicted to be 50
with a low of 34 tonight. My current location: 4006 Cherry Street, Pine Bluff,
Arkansas.
Yesterday: Drove to Malvern to do McClellan research
for Sherry Laymon at the public library there. It was
a rainy day, but not as rainy as the previous Saturday when I drove over and
the library was closed. MLK day was the Monday after that, so they up and
closed on Saturday too. Anyway the reason I'm writing about the trip is that I
was planning to look for the graves of D’s parents, which she and I had visited
about 10 years ago.
When I left the library at about 1pm, I wanted to find
the cemetery but had no idea where to look. Drove north first, past train
tracks, old depot, and new park, and then past Juanita's Furniture and
Appliances, which I'd seen before and photographed but didn't realize I'd pass on the
route I was taking. It's on Moline Street, which reminded me of D's ex-husband
and their son, who would fly into Moline, Illinois to go to to
see his dad in Clinton, Iowa. After passing Juanita's and getting on Hwy 270 heading
back toward downtown, I decided, which I'd also thought of previously, to Let
Go. If it's supposed to happen, if I turn it over to God, it will happen. If
not, not. Which of course didn't exclude my stopping
somewhere and asking where the or a cemetery was.
There are a couple of big churches in the neighborhood south of Page Street, which is what Hwy 270 is
once you turn left off of Main Street going toward Perla
(named for D's great aunt Perla Strauss) and Pine
Bluff. So I thought churches were a good start on the letting go thing and also
for cemetery searching, and I turned off Page and immediately came to a stop
sign at Pine Bluff Street. Didn't know, or didn’t remember, there was a Pine
Bluff Street. Turned onto it, headed in general direction of PB—this being the
old road to PB, possibly—and decided to follow that road, since it would take
me in the right direction to get back home. And if I encountered no cemetery
that way, I would just keep going.
After 10 blocks or so, there was in fact a cemetery on
the left, a fairly large one. Shadowlawn is the name on
the sign next to that particular entrance, which I entered. As I drove around
the U-shaped driveway, I was thinking I recalled that D's parents are buried
with in-ground markers and the graves are on a little hill alongside a street.
The area on my right as I entered the cemetery looked promising in that respect,
so I drove all the way around the drive, re-entered the cemetery, and stopped
along the drive where it seemed right to stop.
Got out and got umbrella out of back seat—I wasn't
even sure I had one with me but there it was and I did need it. I went out
among the graves and walked about 50 yards ahead of where I parked, looking at
headstones and in-ground markers, not finding the Payne's markers. But I was
sure I was near them, or felt like I was, and when I came back toward the car I
kept going past the car, but still didn't find them. So I headed back to the
car and then saw a little corner marker with a "P" on it. I walked a
little farther back, away from the car and farther from the street, and there they
were.
I saw Wilfred's first, then Janet's. Both Wilfred and
Janet were born in 1920. Wilfred died in the auto accident, single car single
occupant crash, on May 10, 1955, when D was a little less than six weeks old.
Janet died of breast cancer on November 22, 1958. Her marker says Janet Payne Balmer, gives dates, and says Daughter of Irma and Albert Strauss.
In my relationship with D there were quite a few
serendipitous occasions, and this finding of the gravesite of her parents seems
like another one.
--DWT
journal entry, edited somewhat. Shadowlawn is
adjacent to the older Oak Ridge Cemetery. The entrance I entered is at the
intersection of Pine Bluff Street and Wilson Street.
December
On December 2, President Lyndon Johnson
went ahead with the Fermi Award ceremony, as scheduled. Standing next to
Johnson’s hulking figure in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Oppie seemed almost diminutive. He stood “like a
figure of stone, gray rigid, almost lifeless, tragic in
his intensity.” By contrast, Kitty was positively exultant, “a study in
joy.” David Lilienthal thought the whole affair “a ceremony of expiation
for the sins of hatred and ugliness visited upon Oppenheimer. . . .” With
Peter and Toni looking on, Johnson said a few words and then handed Robert a
medal, a plaque and a check for $50,000.
In his acceptance speech, Oppenheimer mentioned that an earlier president,
Thomas Jefferson, “often wrote of the ‘brotherly spirit of science.’ . . . We
have not, I know, always given evidence of that brotherly spirit of science.
This is not because we lack vital common or intersecting scientific interests.
It is in part because, with countless other men and women, we are engaged in
this great enterprise of our time, testing whether men can both preserve and
enlarge life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and live without war as the
great arbiter of history.” And then he turned to Johnson and said, “I think it
is just possible, Mr. President, that it has taken some charity and some
courage for you to make this award today. That would seem to me a good augury
for all our futures.”
Johnson then responded with a gracious reference to Kitty as the “lady who
shares honors with you today—Mrs. Oppenheimer.” And then, to laughter, he
quipped, “You may observe she got hold of the check!”
Teller was in the audience that day, and everyone watched with mounting tension
as the two men came face to face. With Kitty standing stone-faced beside him, Oppenheimer
grinned and shook Teller’s hand. A Time magazine photographer caught the
moment with his camera.
Afterwards, John F. Kennedy’s grieving widow sent word that she wanted to see Robert
in her private quarters. Robert and Kitty went upstairs and were greeted by
Jackie Kennedy. She said she wanted him to know just how much her late husband
had wanted to give him this award. Robert, in describing the moment later,
confided that he had been deeply touched.
--Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, first Vintage Books edition, May 2006, page 576.
WORST FLOOD FOR
SEVERAL YEARS
______
Arkansas River Continues to Rise at
Will Register Thirty Feet There This
Morning at 10
O’clock—More Flood Warnings Issued—
Property Believed to be Doomed—River
is Rising at
The Rate of a Tenth of a Foot an
Hour at
—River Officials Say Current Will be
Swift Owing to
Low Stage of the
--The
N.B. TRULOCK
HAS PASSED AWAY
_____
Prominent and Influencial
Citizen
Died at
day
Afternoon--Death Was Sudden
--Funeral To
City.
The sad intelligence was received in this city last night by the family of Mr.
Nichols B. Trulock that he had passed away very
suddenly and unexpectedly at
Robert Trulock will leave today for this place with the
body. No details of the funeral have been arranged as yet, but the body will be
interred here.
The passing away so suddenly of one of Pine
Bluff's most prominent and influential citizens will be a grievous shock to the
community, and the deep sorrow which falls so suddenly upon the bereaved
family, casts its shadow over a host of friends, who have loved and esteemed
him, and over the entire community which recognized in him one of its foremost
citizens.
--The
Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, page 4,
Tuesday, December 1, 1908. N. B. was my
great-great grandfather.
Engineer says the
court house will go
W. J. parkes Predicts Startling Results From Present
Flood—Says
Government Levee Was Not Recom-
Mended and
is Causing All the Damage Now—Sen-
Ator Clarke Urged to Get Levee Cut by War
Depart-
Ment—Useless to Cut Levee Now.
--The
Trulock Funeral
Thursday Morning
The body of the late Nicholas B. Trulock, who died suddenly at
--The Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, Dec. 2, 1908, page 5. “Nicholas” was a misspelling.
Nervousness
Completely Cured
….
Duffy’s Pure Malt Whiskey
…
It
is invaluable for overworked men, delicate women and sickly children. It strengthens and sustains the system, is a
promoter of health and longevity, makes the old young and the keeps the young
strong.
--advertisement in The Pine Bluff Daily
Graphic, Dec. 2, 1908, page 6.
LAST
NIGHT TO
Down Town to Investigate….Hotel
Saved by Change of Current—
The River Front.
--The
TRULOCK FUNERAL
THIS MORNING
Body of Late N. B. Trulock Will be
Interred in
Services From Home of
W. N.
Trulock at 10:30 a.m.
______
The body of the late Nichols B. Trulock, who died unexpectedly at
--The
Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, Dec. 3,
1908, page 3.
RIVER RECEDING;
rAIN
ADDS DANGER
Downpour at Midnight Last Night May
Cause More
Landsliding Along the River Front—Situation Was
Improved Saturday—River Came to A Stand Here
Last Night and Will Fall Rapidly—What is Prom-
Ised as Result of
Cut—Off—List of Losses—East
--The
The federal-offense aspect of opening the
government levee to change the River’s course resulted in much secrecy
surrounding the dynamiting. Even now
survivors of the period are reluctant to discuss the matter for fear of
prosecution by the federal government for conspiracy. Hence, the group that dynamited the levee was
never paid for its dangerous task.
--James W. Leslie, Saracen’s Country: Some
Southeast Arkansas History, p. 29. Copyright 1974 by Rose
Publishing Company, Inc.
Consumer. Consumer…Argh!
Lately I’ve been wondering whether I like
being called a consumer. I never gave
the idea much thought until I read an excerpt from The Strawberry Statement
by James Simon Kunen in which he enumerates some of
the things he doesn’t like: “calling
people consumers” is something he doesn’t like.
(Or I should say, didn’t like in 1968, when he wrote
the book.) Then I began thinking
about the word itself. Consumer. Consumer .
. . Arrgh! I don’t like it! A vacuum cleaner consumes! A garbage disposal consumes! But it’s true: people also are consumers.
Our system of buying and selling is based
on mass production and mass consumption.
If you don’t want to be a consumer you can drop out of the system. Get some land, grow your own food, barter your handmade tapestries. You are going against the grain, though, and
that’s not easy—you still have property taxes to worry about for one
thing. The system won’t accommodate you;
it’s much too inflexible, and many of the sources of production are too far
removed, too conglomerated, to provide anything except the large-scale,
lock-step service designed to bear the greatest amount of traffic.
Thus most of us are consumers by default:
we fail to try anything that isn’t already systematic. But by what other means does one raise a
family? The picture isn’t entirely
gloomy, of course, because there are some advantages. The convenience of it all is the greatest
advantage and is actually at the root of the whole system. If you can do all your shopping at Skaggs-Albertson’s
you don’t need the grocer on the corner or the drugstore down the street. You can load up your car (another
convenience) with all you need by making one stop. But the convenience breeds a certain habit,
and the habit determines what kind of consumers we are. What kind of consumers we are determines . .
. well that’s something to think about.
Energy consumption is something else to
think about: “The energy in one
It’s obvious that Amory Lovins, who put those words together in his 1975 book World
Energy Strategies, is thinking about energy consumption. He is not painting the gloomy picture,
however, like so many others, some of whom are trying to gently but firmly
coerce the public into thinking that new power plants must be built without
hesitation in order to supply the increasing energy needs of our society.
Perhaps you have wondered why energy usage
must so inevitably increase. Isn’t
conservation capable of holding the line on energy consumption?
That question has been exhaustively
studied and the result is central to the idea of using alternative energy
sources: zero increase in the rate of
energy consumption is feasible—in fact a decrease in energy consumption is
possible. Whether or not it’s desirable
depends on who you ask about it.
Lovins talked
about his ideas at the Old State House in
At this point a little information on
Amory Lovins himself is appropriate: He is a 27-year-old physicist, an American
living in
Lovins wants to
convince people that alternative energy sources will not only work, they will also provide a significant improvement over
the present system. He claims the “soft
path” of solar energy, wind energy and other diverse non-extinguishable sources
of energy, “each doing what it does best and none of which is a panacea,” will
ultimately be less expensive than coal, oil and nuclear energy. Government subsidies, he pointed out, make these
conventional forms of energy seem cheaper than they really are. In an interview published August 20 in the
Arkansas Gazette, Lovins says the subsidies should be
abolished and low-interest loans from large holders of capital should be made
available to help people finance insulation and solar collectors for homes and
businesses.
In his speech Lovins
called the soft path “a hopeful alternative to the energy future” and said it
would “have no effects on the life-style” of people in the affluent Western
nations.
One aspect of the soft path is a
decentralization of power production, resulting in energy sources being better
suited to a particular requirement.
Solar energy, for instance, is well suited for heating—water heating and
space heating. The
latter of these accounts for 58% of the energy usage in the United States.
When electric power from a steam generating plant is used for space heating,
it’s like “using a forest fire to fry an egg,” Lovins
said.
He also mentioned other problems with coal
and nuclear power plants: environmental
damage, including “zones of national sacrifice,” such as Appalachia, where coal
is mined and used for energy in far away cities, and also places where highly
radioactive nuclear by-products would be cached; the political problems created
by allocating considerable sums of money to meet capital demands of large power
plant construction; and the tendency to form an “elitist technocracy.”
Conservation is a key ingredient in the
soft approach to solving energy problems.
Of course, we are already being urged to conserve energy, but if we do a
really good job of it, what happens? The
electric rates go up, for one thing—the company must make a profit. So with respect to the present state of
affairs, a little conservation is beneficial, but it’s hazardous to the economy
to do a lot of conserving.
Again there is the alternative of dropping
out of the system, although that means losing the conveniences and changing
habits. (However, it also means gaining
some independence from rising utility costs.)
Lovins approach is to initiate a new system,
one that is not so far removed from the user, nor too conglomerated. Whether or not that system can be implemented
depends on whether people are going to be insatiable consumers or sensible
individuals.
--David Trulock,
in The College Profile, Hendrix College’s student newspaper, December 8,
1978, page 6. Lovins is now director of The Rocky
Mountain Institute. Peace.