In the various stretches of downtime which I was given these past several days, I read the book, “Proof of Heaven”, by Eben Alexander, a psychiatrist who experienced a particularly acute Near Death Experience, a few years ago.  It is notable that he saw the intense interconnectedness of subatomic particles during his time in coma.  This very phenomenon has been documented, in the past few years, by Quantum Physicists.  It underscores the absolute relatedness of all things, both moving and inert.

I had lots of time to think about this aspect of our life.  Indeed, it is the most basic feature of all life in the Universe, at all levels.  This brings me to a confirmation:  All life seeks connection to all other life.  Let’s stick to how this might apply to human beings, for the present.

I drew a few conclusions about our relations with one another.  First, when people seek connection with others, we are persistent in various ways.  It is the longing for connection that spurs criticism, clinginess, flirting, awkward approach, the furtive glance, officiousness and lack of boundaries.  These behaviours represent our sense that we are connected, while remaining uncertain as to just how this is so.  Thus, we engage in trial and error.

Second, although each of us may indulge in one or another of these behaviours, we are put off by those who exhibit them towards us.  This is perhaps because, as one child once said, “We GET it!” Each of us has the basic spiritual sense that we are one with all else.  We don’t need, or want, someone to overwhelm us with more than the natural flow of contact.  We don’t like to have insecurity, either our own, or another’s, interrupt the flow.

Third, perhaps the overriding purpose of this life, which is to know and love God (or the Creative Force, Om, or whatever you wish to call the One Who generated all things), is indeed a series of trials and errors- from which each of us needs to draw lessons which will serve us well, throughout the course of our own eternities.

Finally, as to why some people seek separation- perhaps this is a natural, if counterproductive, reaction to being repeatedly hurt by those with whom we have interacted, and who, for reasons of their own, have failed to understand what we need.

I came away from this read and meditation far more at peace with those around me, and far less inclined to feel put off by, or exhibit, behaviours such as those I mentioned in the first paragraph.  Life remains a glorious set of challenges and growth spurts.

Home tours would bore me, growing up.  I wanted to be outside, running pell mell here and there, or at least in one of my little nooks or crannies in the woods or on one of the hill tops near our house.  Gradually, though, I came to value the connection between homes and their attendant gardens and yards.  My fascination with the Story of Man had a lot to do with this.

On  May 3, I joined a day long tour of several Victorian and Edwardian homes, near downtown Prescott.  The city has done a fine job of creating Historic Districts, of which there are five.  Private enterprise has done the rest- and the Prescott Downtown Partnership offered an excellent Open House, with nine properties highlighted, that day.

Here is a look at these, which I originally intended to post yesterday, Mother’s Day, before life intervened, in the form of Death.

I stopped first at the Marks House.  The area of Union Street on which it, and three other historic homes, are located is called Nob Hill, a somewhat pretentious reference to the eponymous neighbourhood of San Francisco.  Marks House was owned by Jake Marks, a colourful rancher and miner of the 1890′s.

 

Marks House was built in the Queen Anne style, which meant a turret was part of the design.

 

Here is a scene from inside the residence.  The copper tub is unique to this house, among Union Street domiciles, anyway.

 

The framed photos of Jake and his wife bid visitors hello and goodbye.

 

 

The manicured back yard favoured croquet tournaments.

 

I meandered next over to C.A. Peter House, now a vacation rental.  It is remarkably well-maintained.

Hand-painted wallpaper evokes the spirit of Prescott’s mine baron heyday.

A handsome settee was useful for those who were winded by climbing the steps to the house, or by exploring all three of its well-appointed floors.

Steam heat was a must, from the 1880′s right up until the mid- 1960′s.

 

Decorative art alludes to the growing connections between the Mountain West, and the rest of the world, including China.

 

 

Mr. Peter enjoyed a fabulous view of the Sierra Prieta, to the southwest.

 

In the second of three installments, I will look at Henry Goldwater House, and at a few other locales, including Prescott’s most prestigious Bed and Breakfast.

 

 

“Grama died”, the little girl said to her older brother.  Even though the bacon and scrambled eggs their father had whipped up was scrumptiously inviting, the ten-year-old boy knew what he had to do.  He went back upstairs, into his parents’ bedroom and wrapped his arms around his sobbing mother.  The human spirit is ever-prescient.

Some twenty years earlier, in another town, far to the south, a 16-year-old boy had just received his driver’s license.  His father’s brand-new car had the detached bumper that was in fashion back then.  He proudly headed “around the block”, to run an errand for his Dad, while showing his friends his good fortune.  One of his buddies talked him into going for a short spin, so he took the kid along to the store.  When the friend was dropped off, the new driver got too close to the curb, and managed to snag the bumper, ripping it from the frame.  Six months and dozens of chores later, his father gave him back the license.  The human spirit can be very easily clouded.

I’ve always been glad to be male.  My boyhood was somewhat coloured by having been alternately blessed and cursed with an independent worldview, a forgiving soul and an autistic brain- which was tempered by my thirst for learning and by being part of a large, loving family.  My affliction is mild enough that I have never needed a special program or altered scheduling.  It has brought perceptual problems, every so often, but life, overall has been just fine.

My mother once said no male is a real man until he hits 40.  Boys tend to lay their difficulties on someone else’s doorstep.  Men, like my late father and father-in-law, are not thrilled by life’s difficulties, but take the burden of their resolution onto their considerably broad shoulders.  By that standard, I have flipped back and forth between manhood and boyhood at least twenty-dozen times, since I turned 18.  To my great relief, though, boyhood has been a thing of the past, for at least five years.  In my case, my Mom was about  18 years off.  Life has a way of burning the rough edges off anyone, or anything.

The great men in my life, though, have always shown a puckish spirit.  Norm Fellman, my father-in-law, who left us on Wednesday, had a sense of fun that was second to none.  It probably kept his father from clobbering him when the car got mangled, and certainly kept him alive when the Nazis captured him, in the fog of the Battle of the Bulge, in 1944.  By all accounts, he ended up largely getting the better of them, in the end- despite the harrowing, horrific circumstances of his 100 days of Hell, in Berga, Germany.

I learned a lot from Norm, from my Dad, and from so many in the GI Generation.  The boy who comforted his mother, on the death of his beloved Grama, is now in the grandparent range himself.  So, no matter what pleasures present themselves, and what difficulties appear, to be resolved, it’s on this man to take the bull by the horns.

God bless you, Norm, and we’ll keep the faith for ya.

This weekend, Prescott hosted the annual Chalk It Up Art Festival.  I first attended this enthralling event, two years ago, and found this year’s version even more fascinating than that of 2012.  Kids of all ages put some amazing images together, such as the one which heads my previous post, “The Others”.

Here are nineteen of the images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This next piece was photographed while the artist was present.  She was delighted that I shot the full rectangular outline, without prompting.  Others had taken shots from a trapezoidal angle, which bothered her.

 

 

That’s a matter of judgment.  Whatever colours your eyes and heart bring into your life though, the message is clear:

 

 

Later this evening, I will post about the Prescott Historic House Tour, part of our city’s Sesquicentennial Celebration, and Chalk It Up, an annual chalk-art festival.  Both took place this past weekend, as did a Cinco de Mayo Block Party, in Courthouse Square.

First, though, a bit of seriousness.  Let me go further with what I wrote yesterday about the journeys on which each of us is embarked.

Human beings, alone among species, sort those they see as strangers into categories of “race”, skin tone, ethnicity, Faith, gender and sexual orientation( of course, we are the only species which experiences the latter as a life condition).  To be sure, other animals, from ants to prairie dogs to wolves and dolphins, sort by family group and/or territory.  This is all part of territoriality and population control.

Our extra selection processes, really, don’t make much sense.  There is no qualitative difference between me and any of my friends who happen to be Black, but in the 1960′s, there was no way any of them would have been able to live in a family home in the town where I came of age, outside of a small designated area on the south side of town.  That’s changed now, of course, and it was with great personal satisfaction that I learned, in 1996, that my maternal grandmother’s house was purchased by an accomplished attorney of African-American descent.

I thought of all this, while taking in the various events of Cinco de Mayo weekend, in downtown Prescott.   People of all backgrounds are welcome here.  Although Prescott has a tendency towards political conservatism, there seems little bigotry.  Those of us who indulge in politics at all, tend to be of Libertarian bent.

I’ve always had a hard time understanding prejudice, and while working to rid myself of my own pre-conceived notions, which I found confusing, the whole concept of “Other” had to be allowed to surface, and float away.  Young Black men, when I was in my twenties, did me the honour of challenging me to show that I was recognizing, and casting aside, the subtleties which I had picked up in childhood.  I was hurt and angered by my white peers’ callous reaction to the killing of  Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.  He hurt no one, and helped as many of us as would listen to what he had to say.

Still and all, I have had to recognize my own sense of  “Other”.  This separation is a worldwide thing, though.   Many East Asians have trouble with Whites and Blacks being in their midst.  Africans separate by tribe; West Asians, by Faith; Russians, by language.  Some of this “otherness” is rooted in hurt; some of it stems from fear.

The fact remains, however, that we are all connected.  I see this sense of connectedness increasing, incrementally, among Millennials and the current generation of children.  It’s definitely a process, not an event.  Racist teens and twenty-somethings, though, are regarded by the majority of their peers as having mental problems.  This cuts across all racial and ethnic groups, and political affiliations.

The kids are onto something.  “Otherness” is a learned paradigm.  Then again, so is helplessness.

 

 

We are each on a journey of some sort.

 

I’ve had a lot of thoughts and a few conversations, over the past month or so, as to what sort of person always seems to be on the move, and what exactly is it that such a person is seeking.  I can only speak for myself.  I have been peripatetic from Day 1, it seems, and not just in the sense of exploring new physical locations or different scenes.  My nose has been in a book, far more often than my feet have been moving forward.  Ironically, though I love to be walking here and there, when the occasion requires, I can sit still for hours on end, patiently reading, watching the most inane TV shows or just letting my mind wander.  This last characteristic served me well during my Penny’s final year- much of which I spent at her bedside- because there was no place I wanted to be more.

Whether one is engaged in a building project, sitting at dockside with a fishing pole in hand, coaching a soccer team, designing jewelry, doing one’s taxes or climbing Sagarmatha, a journey is a journey.  There may be miscalculations and setbacks along the way, and re-dos are the task of the lucky.  The rest end up in one abyss or another.

This brings me to relationships.  I was more fortunate than I can ever express outwardly, that I had the companionship of a blithe spirit and keen intellect for thirty years.  I will have a spiritual bond with Penny for all eternity, and there will never be a time when I don’t feel her presence.  I am fortunate to be surrounded by family, in an ever-distant outward ring, which is nevertheless always pulsating.  I am fortunate, too, to have friends both near and far- those who understand me, and still refrain from judging.

Some ask, why do you not want another companion?  The quick answer is, I am a self-contained unit, and always have been.  Penny drew me out and aided me to build on what my parents instilled in each of us- to be urgently aware of our surroundings, and BE HELPFUL.   I’m far from dead, emotionally, and see women I consider attractive, in one way or another, every day.  The most important thing, though, is that I have finally learned that it is the friendship, not the attraction, that sets us free.  I would rather have a hundred good friends, or a thousand, than be in any relationship where one of us is feeling like “Damn it, I can do better.”

So, I am happy to have the friends in my life, female and male, young and old, on whom I can count and who can count on me, with no ulterior motives.  We are each on a journey, every minute of every day, and it is a fine thing to see a traveler smile along the way.