The Numbers Path
When I learnt to count,
back in early childhood,
I somehow fixed on the mnemonic
device
of visualising the numbers
following each other
along specific paths.
One through ten tracked
forward away from me;
eleven through twenty went
upward and ever-so-slightly to
the right;
twenty-one through thirty
proceeded horizontally from
right to left;
thirty-one through forty
moved upward and slightly
forward and to the right;
forty-one through fifty went
horizontally
from right to left again and
slightly upward,
and so on.
This numbers path stuck into
adulthood
and even old age
whenever I’ve had to count
something,
particularly something
physical,
such as laps when I’ve been
swimming them
or sit-ups and later crunchies
or reps during weight training.
It’s involuntary and automatic,
as much a part of me
as how I go about
soaping myself in the shower.
Nickname?
I was thinking during the walk
back home from the shops
that since I was settling into
my seventieth year
as comfortably as I had any
right to expect,
one thing that I’ve never had,
but maybe should have,
is a colourful nickname.
By the time I reached the Boundary Road
evocative, slightly
alliterative, and certainly not all that far off target:
Scrap-Iron Selinkoff.
I wonder if it’ll catch on?
Values
Conflict
I had a tough decision that
morning.
I experienced a deep inner
conflict
between two of my most basic
values.
I finally decided that I valued
getting up and about
more than I valued
lying in my nice, warm bed
doing nothing.
I still don't know if it was the right
call.
It’s come up again every
morning since.
Except
He was firm in his Libertarian
conviction
that we are all individuals
and should be able to make our
own
individual decisions and
choices about our lives,
except,
of course, those whose individual choice
is to join and identify with
some group
of which he disapproves
or that has interests opposed to his.
She was serene and blissfully
mindful of being present in the
moment,
her chakras optimally aligned,
confident that compassionate
love
emanated from her like an
arahat’s aura,
except,
of course, when her teen-aged daughter,
an only child in need of all
the compassion she could get,
started having it off with a
29-year-old skinhead neo-nazi,
who moved into their family
home,
bringing with him five
cardboard boxes
filled with aggressively
bigoted hate paraphernalia,
and who soon beat the shit out
of her daughter
right in front of her,
before beating the shit out of
her, too.
Pleasantries
More than anything else,
my miniature schnauzer loves to make friends,
and scoring at about twelve
on any ten-point cuteness scale,
he tends to find this easy
as we go out for our twice-daily saunters
around the
neighbourhood and the park.
Since I have to do it so often
I have stock
replies to the most common comments.
She’d just climbed out of a car and stood on the grass verge,
a Polynesian woman of an age I wouldn’t even try to guess,
wearing a long dress of some raucous fabric
over a physique like a prop forward’s,
topped by an almost perfectly round head
framing a
twinkly smile that could sell anything.
My dog went snuffling up to her, as he does,
poking his aesthetically pleasing little snoot
gently against her leg, his tail doing its usual bit,
and she made the usual oo-ing and cooing noises
and I made my stock reply that he may not be macho,
but he’s a real pretty-boy,
to which she agreed effusively, as they do, boodjie-boo,
and I closed with my stock punchline,
‘Well, after all, he looks like me,’
pointing to my grey beard that’s enough like his whiskers
to call up the usual dog-and-owner similarity response,
this being the
usual end of proceedings.
But it wasn’t.
The woman lowered her voice a half an octave and asked me,
‘Umm. Where’s your leash,
Baby?’
Whites
Before starting full-time
in one of the poorest school
districts in the US
where some of the kids’ homes
had no running water,
I picked up some work from time
to time
as a substitute teacher
at the only high school
in a district that included
only
several old-money in-close San Antonio
or as we called it, Alamo
Whites.
The school cafeteria took all
major credit cards,
including American Express and
Diners Club,
but the pupils could leave the
school at lunchtime,
in case, as the deputy
principal told me,
‘their parents want to take
them to the club.’
The PE classes, unusual for the
mid-80s, were coed,
and the kids were actually cool
about it.
The kids were also almost
unfailingly polite and helpful,
even to substitute teachers,
and I noticed that several
had the same last names as
oligarchical political families
and of family-owned private
merchant banks
that I’d read about in the
news,
banks that financed only a
select clientele
of huge cattle ranches, feed
lots,
and petroleum drillers and
oilfield services;
y’know – major environmental
criminals.
Hot Goods Truck
Some time during my last year of study
for a bachelor’s degree in Washington
DC
word began to circulate on the grapevine
that somebody’s friend-of-a-friend had received a hot tip
that a truckload of stolen stereo components and cameras
and other high-tech-for-1966-or-67 gadgets
would be available in a few days,
and that we could place our orders.
Cash in advance, of course.
Several of my friends, including my flatmate,
placed orders and fronted up the money
for items that,
no surprise, never materialised.
I didn’t.
Statistically, this may seem to be surprising.
I was at an age when testosterone levels
make risk-taking fairly common amongst males,
and my self-identity as part of the pot-smoking subculture
made me indifferent at the time about the ethics
of benefiting from
property crime against big companies.
I’ve also learnt since then
that people who have experienced my level
of what researchers call Adverse Childhood Experiences
statistically tend overwhelmingly to engage
in both high-risk and self-harming behaviour,
and although I have indeed gone for both
from time to time over the years,
I didn’t then.
For one thing, the whole scenario was clearly dodgy;
it reeked of cold-blooded dishonesty saturated with deceit,
and those same Adverse Childhood Experiences
that’d made me vulnerable to taking stupid risks
had also crushed my capacity for interpersonal trust,
and trust is the rootstock of suckerhood.
Consistency
Being a copious cache of
apparent contradictions,
my mind is relentlessly
negative and pessimistic,
but I love to say ‘yes’ to
people instead of ‘no’
whenever I can.
My curiosity is constant and
omnivorous,
but I hate to poke my nose into
other people’s business
or to ask them prying questions
about their personal shit.
The wowsers’ obsession with making stern judgements
in regard to the details of strangers’ sex lives
irritates and annoys me,
but I enjoy a slab of salacious gossip
as much as
anybody else.
I’m at the opposite end from macho
on whatever scale measures these things,
but in the way I present myself in public
and amuse myself in private
I’m hopelessly
butch.
My default setting is for deference,
and I reflexively go along with others’ decisions
instead of demanding my own way,
but I dig in my heels in total resistance
at my first whiff of bullying, exploitation,
or violation of
my basic values.
To me, all the world’s major religions
are ridiculous, dishonest, or – usually – both,
but my relentless agnosticism prevents me
from ruling out the existence
of some kind of spiritual reality, or soul
that we as yet have developed no instrument to detect,
and which I have a nagging suspicion just may exist.
