Phoebe Kate

Some people are born with a striking talent that manifests itself early on.  Like perfect pitch and beautiful singing voice.  Or an uncanny aptitude for math.  Or the ability to draw, dance, do athletics, invent things, create objects effortlessly out of wood or stone or clay, compose music, solve problems that seemingly have no answer, unlock the mysteries of science or understand the spiritual realm.    

Some people are born writers.  I’m one.  I learned to read at four because books looked so interesting and quickly realized I wanted to write them, too.

Other folks, however, are born with the dubious gift of a devious mind — not a particularly admirable quality, but quite useful in certain venues.  Some parlay their talent into careers as politicians, corporate executives, financial advisors, business managers for celebrities’ fortunes, real estate developers, hawkers of “miracle” products that don’t work and televangelists who will send you a special prayer cloth guaranteed to heal your diseases and save your marriage if you’ll just send them a generous “love gift.”

And a few become criminals.  The best of them pull off spectacular capers like the 1963 Great Train Robbery in England and multi-million buck heists of jewelry and art — dishonest acts that become legendary simply because of their daring nature and brilliant planning.

Others, though, should never have attempted a life of crime –  such as these felonious flops, who may have been born to be bad but obviously weren’t gifted with sufficient smarts to get their faces on the Most Wanted posters in the post office.

• Last December in Wales, a man decided to hold up a bank.  He was quickly apprehended because his getaway car had an easy-to-remember and very distinctive license plate.  He sentenced to a 10 year prison term (if I’d been the judge, I’d have added 5 more years for egregious stupidity.)   
• The same with this guy.  In Kansas City, Missouri, another bank robber made his getaway in a van with the name of his (presumably) legit business boldly emblazoned on the sides of it.  Needless to say, the cops had no trouble finding him.
• And in Birmingham, England, we find the biggest idiot of them all.  After robbing a Lloyd’s Bank, he fled to the safest place he knew – his home.  Only he didn’t live in a cabin in the inaccessible wilderness.  His house was right across the street from the bank, where all the witnesses to the crime saw him go…and where, of course, police conveniently arrested him mere minutes later.

~ phoebe kate             

My 23-year-old daughter, who lives in Ohio, is visiting us for a week.  This evening, she and I were sitting on my terrace before dinner.  A couple of young people around her age passed by.  

Now, let me interject that I’m presently living in a townhouse-style complex in a large Southern city and a paved path runs close by my terrace.  Lots of people who live here pass by my terrace every day.  I wave to everyone.  Hell, what can I say –I’m an equal opportunity greeter.

So I waved hello to this pair.  The young female ignored me.  The young male looked startled, then waved back and said, “Hi!” in a tentative sort of voice, as if he wasn’t altogether accustomed to greeting people.

After they were out of earshot, my daughter said to me, “Don’t ever wave at people who are 15 to 25 years of age.”

“Why not?” I inquired. 

“They’re off in their own world,” was her reply, or words to that effect.  “And it makes you seem weird.  Even I don’t wave to people my own age.  Smile, maybe.  But wave, no.”

To which I said, “I’m a crazy cat lady and a poet.  If that doesn’t earn me the right to be weird, I don’t know what does.”

The conversation got me thinking about my children’s generation.  Back in the day, when I was young — the age of the young people to whom I waved tonight — the mantra was “Don’t trust anybody over 30.”  I believed that pop culture dictum until I hit the big three-oh.  And then I made a most interesting discovery: I hadn’t turned overnight into a political conservative, a spoilsport and party pooper, an old fart or a fossil who listened to Lawrence Welk, wore sensible shoes and went to bed at 9:00 PM with a cup of warm milk as a nightcap and a dose of Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia as a chaser.

Does the Y and Z generation see us Baby Boomers as alien life forms that pose a vague threat to them?  Sheeesh!  We’re the Woodstock generation — peace, love, dope.  We’re the original war protestors.  We’re the original civil rights marchers who believe in the equality of all men and women.  We’re the original rebels who thumbed our noses at societal conventions and did our own thing.  Hey, kids — who do you think pioneered the bold new concept of living together without benefit of a marriage license that you all enjoy so freely these days?  We did — and we took a lot of flak for it, too.

I was raised to be friendly.  My parents called it being “civil.”  I grew up in both rural areas and big cities, and the value of a gracious gesture was never underestimated no matter what our environs were.  A nod of acknowledgement, a smile or a wave to neighbors even if you didn’t know their name, the holding of a door for a stranger, a polite “hello” or “good morning” was part of everyday life.  It wasn’t just a token formality; it was a reminder that I wasn’t the center of the universe.  Other people lived here, too, and they deserved a small recognition of their existence.      

I understand what my daughter said about her age group — although it applies to all of us, no matter what demographic we fall in, too.  Yeah, I’m off in my own world most of the time.  I’ve got stuff on my mind, same as everybody else.  But as I sit on my terrace, it costs me nothing to raise a hand and wiggle my fingers at fellow residents going by, to acknowledge their presence on the planet and in my proximity.  It lifts me, and hopefully the recipients of my wave, out of our problems and angst for just a moment during our day.   

Friendliness is perhaps the only real bargain left in this over-priced, de-valued world.  It’s a small gesture of respect and kindness that cost us nothing.  It’s not very popular these days, I guess, but like the old saying goes, “The little things mean so much.”       

~ phoebe kate    

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” ~ Susan Ertz 

“Man is a being that knows death, but can’t believe it.” ~ Edgar Morin

For a long time now, I’ve been pondering the way our society deals with death — or, more accurately, doesn’t deal with it.  If there’s a really dirty word in our language, it’s the word “die.”

It’s such an obscenity that we employ euphemisms when we have to speak of it (which we do as little as possible.)  We pass away, go to our reward, depart this life, meet our Maker, go to our last resting place, give up the ghost, turn up our toes, cash in our chips and push up daisies.  My own personal favorites are we “expire” (like a package of ground beef beyond its sell date) and we “pass on” (only, in this case, it’s not a second serving of dessert we’re foregoing for the sake of our figures.)

The truth is that we’re not just wary of the word – our finite minds refuse to accept the fact that death is an inevitability.  For everyone.  No exceptions.  No substitutions.  No refunds.  No exchanges.  No exemptions because of age, beauty, power and privilege, usefulness to society, prior commitments or celebrity status.

We’re genuinely shocked when someone, uhhhh, checks out.  Even if they’re 98 and have been in worse shape than the Roman ruins for a couple of decades.  Even if they’ve been diagnosed as terminally ill.  Even if they’re seriously sick or injured and face a lifetime of suffering if they manage to survive.

Although they occur every second of every day, we can’t bring ourselves to accept that accidents of every unfortunate kind are a part of life.  Or that healthy young people are snuffed out by a blood clot, an aneurysm, cardiac arrest or a previously undetected defect of a vital organ.  That babies succumb to SIDS or sepsis or congenital problems.     

It would appear that we have almost come to fancy ourselves as immortal, in the style of the classical Greek and Roman deities.  And we’re aided and abetted in our fantasy by modern science, medical technology, the pharmaceutical companies, nutrition and fitness gurus, and the peddlers of products that promise to keep us forever young and healthy which equals forever alive…or so we desperately try to believe.

Are we cockeyed optimists in whom hope for the impossible springs eternal – or are we just in denial? 

Part of the problem is that the American culture has no philosophy of death – except avoidance at all costs, if such can be deemed a philosophy.  Judao-Christian theology attempts to explain why we were born to die.  The concept of original sin equates death (as well as labor pains in childbirth) with punishment for Adam and Eve’s disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. The Grim Reaper, the centuries-old personification of death, is God’s executioner who makes us pay the price for two mythological people screwing up back at the dawn of time.  

Like the innocent man in a crime case, we feel we’ve been set up and framed and unjustly sentenced.  No wonder we spend our lives trying to beat a bum rap.

Our own highly developed, sanitized and well-organized society helps to foster our intimations of immortality.  People in the plague-ridden Middle Ages had no problem grasping their own mortality as they saw heaps of bodies in the street awaiting a cart to carry them away.  Residents of Third World countries are on intimate terms with death.  But in America, we live in a deceptively well-protected bubble that makes our biological end seem like an unnatural act.

We like to rationalize that our fear of death is simply the fear of the unknown, the strange.  Hmmm…I don’t think so.  Americans don’t seem to have a problem with the unfamiliar.  We pioneered the frontier and explored the wilderness.  We invented airplanes and learned how to fly.  We conquered space travel.  We thrive on new experiences and new challenges.  We seek the thrill of adventure.  In our hearts and minds, we all identify with the intrepid Captain Kirk of Star Fleet. 

Hell, we’ll even try deep-fried butter at the state fair.  Now if that isn’t going where no man has gone (or should go) before, I don’t know what is.  But death?  To the ultimate in new frontiers, we say no.  We may court it by lifestyle choices and daredevil activities like sky-diving, drag racing, rock-climbing and snorkeling in waters occupied by sharks and stingrays.  But embrace death?  Never.     

Maybe our issue with mortality is as simple as what Susan Cheever wrote: “Death is so terrifying because it’s so ordinary.  It happens all the time.”  It’s no respecter of persons and has no regard for the earthly things (including our personal schedule, important plans and bucket list) to which we attach such value.  It’s the only guaranteed equal opportunity we have — and it’s the only one we don’t want.           

~ phoebe kate
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It’s official — the holiday season has ended.  (How do I know this?  Because one of my friends — a bona fide Christmas fanatic – finally de-adorned her tree and took down all the indoor and outdoor decorations.  That makes it official, folks.)  The season starts earlier and earlier too, it seems – this year, I observed Christmas stuff side-by-side with Halloween costumes and plastic pumpkins in stores in October.  Jesus in the manger next to devil masks…certainly an interesting theological statement, but I doubt the retailers were thinking about that.

On the internet today, I ran across the results an Atlanta teacher got when she asked her students to write down the words of their favorite Christmas carols.  This is what they turned in to her:

• “Deck the halls with Buddy Holly…”
• “On the first day of Christmas, my tulip gave to me…”
• “Later on we’ll perspire as we dream by the fire…”
• “He’s making a list, chicken and rice…”
• “Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names…”
• “In the meadow, we can build a snowman and pretend that he is sparse and brown…”
• “Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer, you’ll go down in Listerine.”
• “Oh, what fun it is to ride with one horse, soap and hay!”
• “Sleep in heavenly peas…”

And my two personal favorites:

• “With the jelly toast proclaim Christ is born in Bethlehem.”
• “Noel, Noel, Barney’s the King of Israel.”

~ phoebe kate

We all have our personal favorites – scenes in our best-loved movies that make us laugh, cry, gasp, shudder or simply sit there, stunned by the images we see, no matter how many times we see them again.  It’s what makes film-making transcend being a business with an eye on the box office and become an art form that leaves a lasting impression.

By no means complete, here’s a few randomly selected (as they pop in my head) moments captured by the camera that never fail to work their magic on me.

1. The last scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Holly Golightly has just tossed her cat out of a taxicab onto a dreary NYC street in a downpour.  Audrey Hepburn’s beautiful face slowly crumbles as her character suddenly realizes it’s not only an animal she’s throwing away, it’s her humanity and her life as well.  A marvelous piece of acting. 
2. A Streetcar Named Desire – “Stella!  Stellaaa!!  STELLAAAA!!!”  Oh, that agonized voice wailing that name.  It could have degenerated into mere melodrama with any actor other than Brando and any playwright other than Tennessee Williams, but in the hands of geniuses, it becomes a modern-day Greek tragedy. 
3. The brief, beautiful and mystical scene in Michael Clayton where the title character suddenly stops on a lonely road at dawn, transfixed by the sight of three horses on a hill staring at him.  He gets out of his car, walks up the hill and stands eyeball-to-eyeball with the equine trio.  Horses have remarkably expressive eyes and the look in these animals’ eyes is uncanny.  (Oh yes, and then his car explodes.)  
4. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant’s delivery of the lines, “I’m an advertising man, not a red herring.  I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders who are dependent on me and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”  The ultimate in sophisticated moments, urbane irony, suave scriptwriting and Grant’s worldly-wise charm.
5. The opening scene of Casino — DeNiro’s monologue, the car explodes, his character’s body flying out of the car and hovering in slo-mo over the flames as the chorale from Bach’s “Saint Matthew Passion” reaches a crescendo – it just doesn’t get better than this in the cinematic world.               
6. In The Producers, when Zero Mostel throws a cold cup of coffee at Gene Wilder to calm him down, and Wilder screams, “I’m still hysterical.  But now I’m hysterical and wet!”  Those two comedians didn’t have to do much to be funny except be there.  Everything about them is comical — their faces, their bodies, their voices.  Give them an off-the-wall, outrageous farce with a looney script and they’re totally at home.
7. Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal is full of disturbing images — it’s like a Bosch painting come to life — but none so haunting and powerful as the Knight playing chess with Death against the background of an ever-darkening apocalyptic sky.   

   ~ phoebe kate