Author: Troy Gregory

I like to travel, run, read, write, practice mindfulness, take pictures, play soccer, and spend time with family and friends - in no certain order.

Remember the Mosquito

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.                                           – Dalai Lama

This evening I went for a training run at dusk. I was sore from the weekend’s running and had to push myself out the front door. While out there, I “ran” at a paltry pace through my full post-dinner belly and my weekend soreness. About three miles in, I started hitting these swarms of stinging bugs. They’d stick to my sweaty skin and sting me repeatedly. It reminded me of the Dalai Lama quote above, which of course made me smile. After that, I got a little smarter and started ducking and dodging the swarms. To the casual observer, I probably looked like I was off my meds. Again I smiled. These little 1 mm insects were causing me to run like Rocky while he was training for his fight with Ivan Drago. I ran anyway. We don’t have to be massive to make a massive difference.

The Business of Relationships

My wife and I are both on our second marriage. Neither of us intended to be divorcees. Everyone in our families’ prior generations stayed married, so neither of us knew what divorce looked like. Given that second marriages are even more likely to fail than a first marriage, my better half and I have spent a lot of time thinking and writing about what went wrong and how we can work together proactively to keep our marriage healthy and happy. While there are countless tomes written on the topic, I’m going to offer up a rather business-minded approach to the successful components of a long-term relationship. With this approach, I’m also going to skip over what I consider to be table stakes for any committed romantic relationship: mutual attraction, love, fidelity, honesty, and communication. Because let’s cut to the chase, if even one of these is missing, there’s no foundation upon which to build a long-term romantic relationship.

My wife and I have found that the for a long-term committed relationship to work for a long time, the relationship needs some things that are pretty important in business. Of course, we are both process engineers who have worked in a variety of industries, so there’s an inevitable business environment bias here. But, we’ve also gone through a good bit of couples therapy in our prior relationships, read several books on the topic and applied them, and – now because of our experience – helped counsel many friends and family members going through similar crises – small and large. Oh, and my wife is more than two-thirds through her Masters in Psychology from Harvard University. So… this isn’t a slap-dash-throw-some-stuff-on-the-wall idea. These ideas are tried and tested in many circles. So let’s get to it.

  1. Couples need a shared vision. This already sounds like business school, doesn’t it? Bear with me. Let’s say one of you wants to be a medical doctor – or already is a medical doctor. That’s going to mean long hours away from home and very likely being on call. How does that fit with the partner’s goal of being a school teacher with summers off to go hike the Appalachian Trail? Well it might work, as long as consistent togetherness isn’t your main objective. Let’s look at another scenario: One of you wants to have a daily driving automobile that reliably gets you from point A to point B and then to also have a flashy sports car in the garage to take out on sunny weekends. Your partner wants to be a social worker who primarily helps children. Again, it can work, but its going to take a lot of discussion and compromise. Generally speaking, social workers don’t make a lot of money for flashy sports cars. Carried forward, social workers who want to help children also probably aren’t prioritizing pricey non-essential vehicles. See the rub? In both of these short scenarios, the couples do not have a shared vision of where they’re going. I can speak from my own experience that in my first marriage, we did not have a shared vision of where we were going. One could argue that we got married too young before we had a chance to figure out what our shared vision was. But I know lots of couples who met at 16 or 17 years old and have had very successful relationships now 25 or 30 years on. In all of those cases, they had a shared vision of where they were going. To discuss this with your significant other, I like the Be, Do, Have model. For the sake of brevity, I’ll say it this way: Each individual needs to decide who he or she is going to BE (the kind of person with what values, etc.), and based on that, what he or she will DO (what profession), which will in turn dictate what each will HAVE (material possessions and the like). So many people do it the other way around: they start with what they want to HAVE, which then dictates the budget and determines what they need to DO, which then begins to inform who they’re going to BE.
  2. Couples should have a shared Culture. If there is a yang to the yin of the vision, it is the culture. It informs where you start and how you go about pursuing your shared vision. Culture – unless it is being actively developed like in the corporate world – usually comes from one’s family of origin. Family of origin sets the stage for how individuals will communicate, work together, problem-solve, raise a family, and so on. It isn’t an insurmountable problem to have very different families of origin, but as my wife and I have both learned from experience, when times get tough, we race back to what we learned growing up. I’ll contrast my first and current marriages again for illustration. In my first marriage, our respective families had very different ideas about budgeting and bill-paying, about child-rearing, about the balance of power, and about negotiation tactics used in the relationship. I thought these matters were surmountable, but they caused a great deal of stress and arguably the downfall of the marriage. When I contrast that with my current marriage, our respective families of origin are magnitudes closer to one another. While each of our Mothers and Fathers have very different personalities, their approaches to the relationship overlap a great deal. This has helped my wife and I work collaboratively to blend and raise a well-adjusted family with four kids, run a household budget that not only pays the bills but offers up self-actualizing activities to each of its members, and to support one another as we pursue our shared vision for our family. Differences in family of origin are able to be overcome, but it takes a lot of work. I personally start with educating myself. Here is a list of books that might help. But after education comes the tough work of problem-solving.
  3. Problem solving can save the day. In both of the cases of Vision and Culture, couples who are equipped with the skills and committed to the cause of solving problems can overcome almost all set-backs. Interestingly, problem-solving is not a universal skill in the professional world much less the ewy gooey world of romantic love. In fact, this was another point of contention in my first marriage. My ex-wife repeatedly rebuffed me for trying to analyze our issues for root cause and corrective action. She would say, “this is a relationship, not a business.” I can’t fault her. I’m sure many people feel the same way. But while my first wife was satisfied with an accuse-argue-apologize cycle of addressing matters, I was not. I like solving problems. I don’t like futile repeats of past conversations and I don’t care for stalemates. So again, even our tools and commitments to overcome our differences in our vision and our culture simply weren’t there. When contrasted with my wife now, again, it is a world of difference. My wife is an industrial engineer and a natural born problem solver. She can meet me at my nerdiest point. While we started out with strong overlaps in both our vision and culture, those things aren’t permanent. As we each grow and take on new challenges, our vision and the associated goals grow and change. In these cases, problem solving saves the day. We’re able to collaboratively work through these new ideas and grow together because we have the skills to do so. While I could start a whole new blog and completely geek out on problem solving in all types of settings, I’ll offer up the following primer.
    • Clearly state the problem, starting with what, when, where, and how often. Avoid “who,” any assumed intent, and “always” & “never” statements if you can. For example, instead of saying, “You don’t respect me because you always load the toilet paper roll backwards,” you might offer up, “I notice that the toilet paper roll gets loaded in different ways, sometimes over the top and sometimes unrolling from the bottom.” The second statement takes the “you” out, it takes the assumed intent of not respecting me out, and it takes out the language of “backwards,” even though we all know the right way to load the toilet paper is over the top. 
    • Confirm the measurement. It is important to confirm that everyone is measuring the matter the same way. Something like, “When the trash has been packed into the bag so tight that it takes a shot of compressed air to get the bag out of the bin without ripping it apart, I think it is over-full. What do you think?” You will be surprised at how often we simply don’t measure things the same way.
    • Agree on a standard. This is very much related to the measurement problem. If there isn’t agreement on what “good” looks like, it is nearly impossible to measure it. This can get tricky in domestic situations because we all have our quirks. Dirty dishes in the sink and untreated spots on the carpet drive me bananas. My family thinks I’m a control freak, and, well, they’re right. But in the balance of power, I can’t bully my way into it. We all have busy lives. So it might be that the only option for my daughter was to grab a quick bite after school and then head to work while leaving her dish in the sink to soak. So, it is a process.

In closing, I hope you’ve already achieved domestic bliss. If you’re in the process of a long term commitment, perhaps the lessons I’ve learned through my own failures can help you build a healthier and happier relationship. Best wishes!

What’s so great about 2:30 AM?

Seriously. It is currently 4:38 AM – not for you of course, but for me. I have been up for a few hours. Much like every night for the past two and a half weeks. So far, I’m coming to the conclusion that if you ever want to test your resolve and your sanity, become an insomniac. No wait, I don’t wish this on anyone. But the fact is I’m up. Again. So this early morning, I’m asking myself, “What’s so great about 2:30 AM?” What is going on at this hour that I feel compelled to wake from my restful slumber and take part in? Because on the surface, it feels like a whole lot of nothing.

What is in fact going on at 2:30 AM? Well, upon deeper inspection, not much. The fan in our bedroom is still running. The lights are still off. The birds outside aren’t making any noises because I assume that in their natural God-given nature, they know how to get a full night’s sleep. I will say that the trains that I can hear in the distance definitely run through the night. But I’m pretty sure that’s not a new development over the past couple of weeks. I’m also certain that there have been a few things added to the internet since I last checked, but unless the collective global digital brain can tell me how to get back to sleep, I don’t think I’m interested. Now there’s an idea. OK, Google, let’s see what you’ve got.

The Search

So as I lay awake while my wife has the audacity to sleep soundly beside me with her metered breathing and her neither tossing nor turning, I whipped out my trusty smart phone to see what the internet has for me.

OK, Google, Why do I wake up between 2 and 3 AM every night?

Here’s what we’ve got:

First, I learn that this is when my liver becomes active and processes the previous day’s nonsense that I threw into my pie hole. The reality is that I generally eat a pretty clean diet. Or at least I did before all of this started. I have to be honest with you my dear readers, After about a week of running on 3 hours of sleep per night, one’s resolve (or at least my resolve) to eat healthy starts to fly out the window. If when the alarm goes off, you are dead tired before you start your day, meal prep and for that matter what food constitutes a meal starts to get pretty loose. So while it may be a compounding factor at this point, I know I didn’t start there. OK, that’s probably not it. What else?

I learn that I might be harboring anger issues. I’m learning that when my liver kicks into action, if I’m harboring anger issues, I could be releasing adrenalin that will in turn keep me up. That sounds plausible. I know I’m certainly up. So let’s scratch the surface there. Am I angry about anything? Why yes, I’m angry that I’m up and that I cannot seem to be able to go back to sleep – every night, regardless of what I eat or drink and what my liver seems to be doing. Not so fast Daniel-son, what about the underlying anger? You know, that deep rooted stuff that only a therapist or Oprah could get out of you? Well, let’s give that a moment; heaven knows I’ve got a couple to spare. After repeated ponderings on this subject, I don’t think this is it. But who knows, I’m not done writing. Maybe something will pop out. For now, let’s see what else the internet can suggest.

Next, I learn that I might not be getting enough exercise. If the body doesn’t move enough, then basically it can blah blah… No, that’s not it. I have officially restarted my marathon training and I’m running a good bit in spite of my lack of rest. And weirdly, it doesn’t seem to matter. I actually went for a morning run the other day after just 2.5 hours of sleep in one night and I put in some quick miles. So no. Let’s keep moving.

Ghosts? OK, so I’m reading here that 2-3 AM is the chief witching hour for souls who can’t or won’t lay to rest. If I feel like someone is watching me, it is probably a ghost. Ponderous. Perhaps I will consider having the house exercised. But first, I really want to get the carpets done. Plus, I don’t feel like I’m being watched. I feel like I’m just awake. Painfully and stupidly awake while the rest of the world – including those in the afterlife – can seem to get some rest.

Dehydrated? Over-hydrated? Pituitary issues? Hypoglycemic? Don’t eat bananas. Oh wait, bananas can be good. Don’t lay in bed awake. Eat a little before bed, but don’t eat anything after 7 PM. Read before bed but not in bed. Limit my screen time. Don’t watch scary movies. Make sure my chi is centered. Try yoga. Sleepy time tea? Melatonin. Benadryl. Head injury.

Sigh.

Sadly, another half night of no sleeping has passed by. It is now approaching my “waking” time. So I’m going to get on with my day, prop myself up with Joffrey’s Latin Espresso from the break room at work and slog through another day as a zombie. I suppose the goal should be to find a silver lining. Well, if this keeps up, I’ll definitely become a more practiced – if not better – blogger. I’ll learn the limits of marathon training with sleep deprivation. I might even get to Inbox zero. And who knows, I might even figure out what’s so great about 2:30 AM.

Sweet dreams…

Haiku You

There are several forms of poetry that I truly enjoy. I don’t know where this comes from, as I essentially have no history with poetry. But, I think if you’re following my blog, we can agree that “eclectic” is a nice, agreeable term for my personality. So it probably comes as no surprise that I love the Haiku. I mean, what’s not to love? There are three lines with specific syllabic requirements; and the first two lines agree while the third line is juxtaposed against the first two. It is a challenge begging to be mastered.

The Assignment

Not long ago, I dreamed up this idea that I thought would be fun. Thankfully, I have a team at work that is willing to entertain my whims. Otherwise, I’d just be this weird dude with weird ideas that didn’t work out. So, I dreamed up this idea. What if we (my team) all took a couple of weeks and wrote our own personal Haiku? My team members got to choose how it represented them – whether it was past, present, or future. At about the midpoint of the assignment, we pondered whether or not our lives would fit into 17 syllables. So we decided to add a wrinkle. Everyone should send their Haiku poems to me. I would compile them and read them aloud while everyone else on the team voted on the author.

The Results

While I won’t type them all, my team did fantastic. Some of them were very specific and others were more metaphorical, but all of them represented their author in some specific way. I’ll lead off with mine. Not because its the best, but because I can most readily explain the story behind it. Here goes:

Roll the rock up, up
Roll it today and always
Everything changes

Those of you familiar with Greek mythology will already recognize the reference to Sisyphus. For those unfamiliar, Sisyphus was a world class smart aleck. In life, he outsmarted both man and god alike. So in his afterlife, his eternal task was to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down. Personally, I struggle with futility and anything that is circular. If there is a definition of hell for me, it would be to suffer the fate of Sisyphus. But alas, I identify with him as well. I readily recognize the folly in the mundane, everyday tasks that constitute my day-in, day-out routine; and yet at work I dutifully go about my tasks as if I had the short term memory of a gold fish.

As for the third line, it essentially means that over time, things do change although they often border on the imperceptible. It wasn’t until I accepted my mundane tasks and the duty with which I execute them that I recognized that change does happen. One day, I’m plugging away rolling the rock up the hill with a sense of duty and all of a sudden, it becomes trendy to roll the rock up the hill. The next thing I know, I’ve got a following. People want to know how they can roll their rocks up their hills as fast and as far as I do.

As a forty-something, I also identify with the book / movie Fight Club. I think this was the most pointed reference I had to identifying a Power or Spirit Animal. Since Fight Club, I have often joked that my spirit animal is a dung beetle (Seriously, check my Twitter feed). It doesn’t take a genius to associate Sisyphus and dung beetles, so I’ll leave it to you dear reader to pull it all together. Plus, I was in an office setting, so its much safer to talk about rocks and boulders than it is to talk about dung. I digress.

Here are a couple of other notable Haiku poems from my team – without all the Greek mythology / Discovery Channel references.

Rough notes on a page
Melodies sad and hopeful
Heart sings with laughter

Music in my head
The wind and trees surround me
Living wild and free

And perhaps my personal favorite:

What comes after this?
Another year has gone by
Oh great, more traffic

In the end, my team loved this activity. They enjoyed the chance to be creative in an otherwise standard corporate office setting. We also enjoyed the guesswork of deciding who wrote what. What I find most interesting is that if we did it again in a few weeks time, the Haikus would be different. There is something very “here and now” about this activity. Which leads me to my closing questions:

What is your Haiku?

If you were to restrict “who you are” to the very short requirements of the Haiku, what would they be right here, right now?

I’d love to read yours.

Ulysses: Hades

In Homer’s The Odyssey, Book XI is the story of Odysseus and his men leaving Circe’s island. But as a condition of their departure, Circe directs him and his men to Hades to talk to the dead. While in Hades, Odysseus speaks to many different dead characters who add several layers of depth to the epic. Among many others, he speaks to his deceased mother who updates him on the recent happenings in Ithaca. He also speaks to the prophet Tiresias, who offers foreshadowing of adventures to come.

In Ulysses, the Hades episode also breaks the story open. We are treated to a host of new characters who offer a broadening purview of the world outside the perspectives of our main characters, Bloom, Molly, and Stephen Dedalus. Instead of journeying to a mythical underworld for discussions with the dead, Hades in Ulysses sees our characters participate in the procession and funeral service for the recently deceased Patrick Dignam. Bloom rides in the procession inside a carriage with Jack Power, Martin Cunningham, and Simon Dedalus – Stephen’s father. Once at the church, most of the conversation stops and then we switch to the thoughts in Bloom’s head as he watches the Catholic process with detachment. After the service, the men walk with John O’Connell, the cemetery caretaker, to the burial service. Bloom briefly walks around the cemetery and ponders death. Finally, the men disperse.

Themes:

There is a wealth of dialogue in this episode and, as with The Odyssey, the dialogue with the other characters reveals a great deal about the story. We learn that Bloom doesn’t quite fit into this society, as much as he has tried to assimilate. At every jab, Bloom takes the high road. He intimates that he feels responsible for his son Rudy’s poor start to life and untimely death. We also get confirmation that Bloom’s father committed suicide. We get a sighting of Blazes Boylan and come to realize that he is popular with the men in Bloom’s circles. We also get lots and lots of thoughts about death. Bloom considers people being buried standing up, but then thinks better of it because at some point, their heads might pop out of the ground. He reconsiders coffins and how they merely put off the inevitable digestion by insects. He considers the horror of being buried alive and possible solutions, including a phone line and an air hole in the coffin. Aside from the death theme that overrides much of the episode, here are the prominent themes:

  • Anti-Semitism: As the procession passes Reuben J. Dodd – a moneylender – the men scoff and curse at him inside the comfort of the carriage. The men all feel put out by Reuben because they have all owed him money, although it is implied that Bloom has not. In an effort to change the topic, Bloom brings up the story of Dodd’s son falling into the Liffey, which Cunningham rudely takes over. When it is revealed that Reuben paid the rescuer a florin for his son, the elder Dedalus scoffs that it was “one and eightpence too much.” While there is no direct attack on Bloom, who is a Jew, in this episode, the attack on Dodd’s character is left hanging as a slight against the race.
  • Bloom the outcast / inferior: There are several shots across the bow of our man Bloom, both from the crowd and from Bloom himself. He is the last to enter the carriage and the last man to kneel at the ceremony. He sits uncomfortably on the soap in the carriage that he bought at Sweny’s because he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. He offers up the paper to Simon Dedalus to read Dan Dawson’s speech as Cunningham suggests and Simon turns him down. When the men see Boylan, Bloom wonders what Molly and the others see in him. Jack Power pointedly asks Bloom if he’ll be traveling to Belfast with Boylan and Molly – to whom he refers to as Madame – implying that he knows something of the affair. Bloom remarks that a sudden death is the best death because there is no suffering and the men disagree. When Bloom thinks of Rudy, he quotes a saying that if a male child lives, its because of the mother, if he dies, its due to the father. John Henry Menton doesn’t remember Bloom but remembers Molly and wonders why she would marry him. At the end of the chapter, Menton snubs Bloom after he helpfully tells Menton that he has a ding in his hat.
  • Bloom rises above the slights: In all of the cases mentioned above, Bloom carries himself with dignity. After Power’s “Madame” slight to Bloom, he wonders about the mistress Power keeps, but of course he keeps it to himself. When Power brings up suicide as the worst of all and Dedalus adds, “The greatest disgrace to have in the family,” as well as “They say a man who does it is a coward.” Bloom does not reply, but he observes that Dedalus “looked at me.” He then critiques Simon Dedalus and his drunkard wife who has died, but he leaves it all alone. Bloom is satisfied with the thought, “He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.” Finally, after pointing out the ding in Menton’s hat and being curtly thanked, Bloom thinks, “Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way.” As with Menton, Bloom is paying it forward with all of these men. He does not get into a battle of egos but rather taking the slights in good graces even though he’s armed with the knowledge to fire back.
  • Father and son: Early in the episode we get to compare Simon’s position on Stephen and the Gouldings to what Stephen said it would be in Proteus. Of course, Stephen had his father pegged. Simon is harsh on Stephen but Bloom gives him credit for looking out for him, like Bloom would have done for Rudy. Bloom also thinks about his father and his son, both of which are dead. He repeatedly says “poor papa” when thinking about his father. As mentioned above, Bloom is taking the blame for Rudy’s early death. We come to realize that Bloom’s lineage is over at the moment and he is very much on his own.

At the close of this episode, I am inclined to forgive Bloom his trespasses for carrying on with a flirtatious pen pal and to pull for the hero to rise above his troubles. With no father and no son, and certainly cast as an outsider in the group, the episode leaves us with a distinct impression of vulnerability for Bloom. We know his wife is headed for an affair with Boylan and that Boylan is a man about town. Death is on his mind and we know that his father – who Bloom says was in pain – committed suicide. There are so many thoughts and impressions in such a little space. Hail to the master, James Joyce!

Going Home

“Going home and spending time with your family and your real friends keeps you grounded.” – Jennifer Ellison

This weekend, my wife and I went “home” to the greater Portsmouth, Ohio area. She and I were both born and (as for me, mostly) raised there. Her parents are still there. Mine moved on when I was 14, but I still have plenty of roots. We were without kids this weekend and owed her Mom some “we” time, so made the 2+ hour drive from our house to my wife’s childhood home. I think I can speak for my wife to say that going home for both of us this weekend was bittersweet.

Life in Portsmouth is completely different from our life in Columbus, Ohio. Portsmouth is the epitome of small-town middle America with a population of less than 30,000. Columbus is a major metropolitan city where the population approaches 2 million. In Columbus, we have something going on every night of the week; dinner with friends, kids’ sporting activities, organized after-work events, and so on. In Portsmouth, there might be one event per week in addition to Wednesday evening church service. When we go “home,” we experience the life of our childhood. The life that we couldn’t wait to escape. The slower, sleepy life that would drive us nuts from boredom on the long-term, but that we honestly relish in bits and pieces on these brief weekend treks down memory lane.

This weekend, I went hiking  for four hours with my cousin’s husband. From start to finish, neither of us could get cell service among our three mobile phones. Not that we wanted it, I’m just offering a sense of how remote things are in the greater Portsmouth area. My wife and I also attended a car show, which is where people from all around the local Tri-State area (Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia) drive their always polished, often restored, sometimes cobbled together hotrods and put them on display for eager gawkers and some serious bragging rights. The night usually wraps up when the hotrods begin to file out onto the main road and leave a good bit of rubber behind in a plume of blue-grey smoke. It is like a scene out of the movie American Graffiti. We spent a good bit of time with family sharing food and catching up on stories and events. My wife and I also squeezed in a 3 mile training run in the downtown area and on the campus of my first alma mater, Shawnee State University. During our travels around the county, I drove past every house I lived in until I moved away from the area. All of this brings me back to the bittersweet point.

A part of me – a very small part indeed – misses that life. Sure, we couldn’t live in the house we live in now. Our kids wouldn’t have had the opportunities that they’ve had in the Columbus area. No, we couldn’t travel like we do. Yes, I find myself getting cranky at the painfully slow drivers while I’m down there. On and on. But. BUT, a small part of me misses that simpler, small town life. A part of me misses the time when the big event of the day was putting two bare feet into the water and casting a fishing pole. That same part of me misses the house I grew up in, the friends with whom I learned about life, and the roads on which I learned to drive. Judging by my wife’s eagerness to show me the artifacts of her past, I think she share’s the sentiment.

I’m sure this is just the nostalgia of the trip taking hold. If you moved us back to Portsmouth today, my wife and I would go stir crazy in 3 days – or less. I think the important thing here is to revisit memory lane with vulnerability every now and again. With vulnerability, I mean to be open to the trip, to slow down and walk the paths of the memory, to revisit events and consider their impact on you. We can so easily get caught up in planning the next big trip or office politics or whatever. But there’s nothing like a trip to your childhood home to ground you in the terra firma of who you are and what in life is important. It offers a whole new perspective to the impending work week.

The house featured in this post is the current state of my parent’s home when I was brought home from the hospital more than 43 years ago. I remember it as a quaint red brick and red siding house in good repair surrounded by a chain link fence to keep me and our small dog in the yard. But that was a long time ago. Times change.

Ulysses: The Lotus Eaters

In Book IX of Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are blown off course by a terrible storm and arrive at the land of the lotus eaters. In need of supplies, the men disembark and interact with the locals. The people do them no harm, but offer them their local food, which is derived from the lotus flower. The powerful narcotic makes the men sleepy and lackadaisical about heading home. Ultimately, Odysseus ushers his men back onto the boat and they are put back on their journey. This book is about lazy intoxication.

In Ulysses, The Lotus Eaters episode is “action packed” in the midst of the mundane. Bloom has left his house a good bit early for Dignam’s funeral and walks to the post office. From the post office, he walks into a church service and from there he walks to Sweny’s pharmacy to order Molly’s lotion. Recall from Calypso that Bloom, who is willing to bring his wife breakfast in bed, is painfully aware of her impending affair with Blazes Boylan. Aside from his sexual objectification of the neighbor lady in the butcher shop, he seems like a practical, stand up man. The reader is drawn to pity him. We all have the occasional stray thought and it wasn’t as if he was actively pursuing the neighbor lady. In The Lotus Eaters, we catch another side of Bloom. We learn through his trip to the post office that he is carrying on at least a written flirtation with another woman under a pseudonym. His pseudonym, Henry Flower, would indicate that his actions are premeditated. Our hero is in fact a flawed man.

Outside the post office, while Bloom is trying to focus on the letter from his naughty pen pal Martha Clifford, Bloom’s acquaintance McCoy stops for a chat. The stream of consciousness dialogue can be difficult here because Bloom is carrying on his thoughts while McCoy is talking and then Bloom spots a sexy upper class woman across the street. We’re exposed to the inner and outer man simultaneously. The dialogue of McCoy, Bloom’s annoyance of McCoy, Bloom’s wandering thoughts, and Bloom’s desire to see more of the woman across the street are all intermingled.

During the dialogue, McCoy asks Bloom about his wife, Molly, and the discussion turns to singing engagements. McCoy’s wife has gotten a gig and he’s eager to share the news. We again see multiple sides of Bloom here. Internally he scoffs at the comparison between McCoy’s wife and Molly, as he views Molly as the superior. With regards to the sponsorship and organization of Molly’s singing engagement, we also read the first asking of the question, “Who’s getting it up?” With an obvious sexual overtone to the question, Bloom can never bring himself to give the straight answer, which is Blazes Boylan. He gives McCoy a complex round-about answer because he cannot bring himself to verbalize the connection between Boylan and his wife.

After reading the naughty letter from Martha, Bloom goes into a church during mass. Through is inner dialogue as he observes the service, we get his thoughts on the Catholic machinery. He thinks about the whole process with complete detachment and analyzes its effectiveness on the masses.

From the church, Bloom heads over to Sweny’s pharmacy. He realizes that he has left the recipe to Molly’s lotion along with his house key in his other trousers. The chemist is able to pull the recipe from the records. The lotion will be ready for pick up later, so Bloom takes a bar of lemon soap on credit and moves to leave the pharmacy. He then runs into Bantam Lyons who asks to see Bloom’s newspaper to get a tip on the day’s horse race. In another effort to be left alone, Bloom offers his newspaper to Lyons while internally casting judgement on him and the others who seem to be caught up in a recent gambling frenzy. Lyons mistakes Bloom’s statement that he was going to throw the paper away as a tip on a racehorse and rushes off. Bloom is then left to his thoughts and he drifts to thinking about a bath and a massage.

Themes

The connection between Ulysses and The Odyssey in this episode didn’t quite hit me over the head at first. The lotus eaters are satisfied in their lazy stupor, not striving for anything. While this period for Bloom is essentially killing time between the morning and Dignam’s funeral, I was attempting to find the at-rest inertia of the Dublin locals to connect to the Greek lotus eaters. It didn’t seem to be there. McCoy has ambitions, as does his wife. Lyons is in a rush to bet on the horses. Only after considering the themes did I get it. The lotus eater here is Bloom. He doesn’t want to be at home in the face of Molly’s affair and he doesn’t have any particular place to be. He’s free to wander about. As he observes the world around him and his thoughts wander, we are keyed into some of the themes.

  • Intoxicants: Bloom thinks of the Far East as a lazy intoxicating place. He observes the stupefied horses drawing the tram. He considers the calming narcotic effect of smoking a cigar. At the chemist, Bloom thinks about alchemy and sedatives.
  • Marital Infidelity: Molly is forever on Bloom’s mind even though he has left home for the day and essentially knows that Molly will have an affair. Bloom sexualizes an upper class woman across the street and hopes to catch a glimpse of her legs. We also learn that Bloom is carrying on a secret correspondence with another woman who knows he is married. She asks, “Are you not happy in your home?” and “Tell me, what perfume does your wife wear?”
  • False Cordiality: In both cases of Bloom’s interaction with people he knows, he is cordial but – because we’re treated to his thoughts – we see that he is being false. He tries to avoid McCoy but is accosted. During the conversation, Bloom only marginally focuses on what McCoy is saying. His interest is piqued when McCoy tries to compare his wife to Molly, at which Bloom internally scoffs. At Sweny’s, Bloom considers the shortest way possible to get rid of Lyons. Ironically, Lyons takes Bloom’s castoff comment as a tip on the horse race, which we’ll revisit later.
  • Criticism of Catholicism: There is scarcely any other way to interpret Bloom’s objective evaluation of than catholic mass than as critical. By this point in Joyce’s life, he has had a full crisis of faith. Given his treatment of the mass in this lotus eating episode, I would be remiss if I didn’t connect back to Karl Marx’s assertion that “[religion] is the opium of the people.” It is never stated, but that’s not Joyce. He shows the reader rather than telling them.

As I close, I am sitting in marvel at the literary giant that is James Joyce. In giving us the flawed hero with a flawed wife who lives in a flawed community, and whose adventure spans 24 hours of an everyday middle class life in early 1900’s Dublin, Joyce essentially stopped the clocks and examined life at a depth rarely glimpsed elsewhere. If nothing else, Ulysses is intensely human.

Can’t Run? Hike!

I have a busted rib or two at the moment. After about a week of trial and error, I have figured out that the only way it is going to get better is for me to reduce physical activity to a bare minimum. Within a day of hurting my rib, I figured out how to “run” at a slower and modified stride. But I also quickly realized that with the deep breathing and still occasional jolt of the stride, I wasn’t doing myself any favors with actual recovery. I’m now on day 3 of minimal activity. The words “stir crazy” seem to fit the bill, so I needed to do something. So this fine Saturday afternoon, I decided to go to Highbanks Metro Park and go for a hike.

I use the term “hike” here pretty loosely. Its pretty much a walk in the woods on improved paths. But… the place where I wanted to hike is underwater from the June monsoons Ohio has been experiencing, so you’ll just have to bear with me. On a lark, I took my camera along for the ride… er, hike. I figured I’d catch a squirrel or a couple of migrant songbirds with my trusty DSLR. It turns out, the squirrels were not in the mood to pose for me; and the vegetation was so dense that I only spotted a few birds but I wasn’t quick enough to catch them with my camera. So I hiked on.

Undeterred by the unwillingness of Mother Nature’s sentient beings to pose for me, I snapped several pictures of the park’s flora.

After a bit, I decided to slow down and take a deeper look at the world around me. I’m so glad I did. A whole new set of life opened up right in front of me. I found a frog or toad that would sit comfortably on my thumbnail, a daredevil snail transitioning from one blade of grass to another while upside down, a millipede making short work of the gravel mounds it was traversing, and a moth that didn’t seem to care about my camera one iota.

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Heartened by my transition from the big picture to the smaller focus, I decided to transfer back from fauna to flora. What views!

As I close, I have to admit that this rib issue has had me on edge. For several weeks, I have been plodding along, running easy pace miles. I am supposed to be running some quicker miles over this week and next as I officially begin marathon training on July 6. Not only am I not ramping up into my training, I can’t run at all. Instead of wallowing in my own self-pity, I decided today to get out and move in a way that won’t hurt my rib. I hiked up and down hills for nearly 3 hours. Along the way, I was able to capture several snapshots of the absolute magnificence of this world we live in. I hope you enjoy.

What Is Your Legacy?

Father’s Day. At this point in my life, it is admittedly a little bittersweet. My children are mostly grown. I have two younger and very dear to me step-sons, but their top-notch biological father is very much in their lives. My own two “kids” are 22 and 18 and are rightfully moving on to their own lives. My father and grandfathers have all passed away. In fact, today marks the two-year anniversary of my father’s passing. For this Father’s Day, I’m going to focus on legacy. What is the legacy we’re leaving behind as it stands right now?

Stephen Covey made this concept very popular. One of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he called it “Begin with the End in Mind.” Covey’s concept doesn’t have to pertain to the finality of life, it could simply mean “think about what this project will look like at the end” or similar. But today I’m focused on the legacy we leave behind. I also want to be very clear that this has nothing to do with money or accomplishment. I know the word can get tied up in “legacy funds” or buildings with people’s names on them to commemorate their legacy. Rather, the legacy that I’m considering here is, “what mark are you leaving on those around you?”

As I remember my father today, I think of what his legacy is for me. While a few bullets would never do it justice, here’s what I’ve got:

  • My dad taught me about politics. I don’t mean the silly show that plays out 24-7 on the hyper-media loop and twitter-sphere. I mean real life working with people. I still need reminders from time-to-time, but Dad helped me understand the imperfections of the world around me.
  • He taught me about the merits of hard work. Dad finished his college degree while working as a janitor in an office building. After he got the degree, he got hired on at GTE (later became Verizon) and had a long successful career. As our major bread-winner, he worked to give my sister and me a nice home and a great start to life.
  • Dad also inspired me to fight my own demons. Dad helped me see that we’re often our own worst enemies and that the single best thing to do in life is to come up with a method that works for us. For that, I couldn’t thank him enough.

Unexpectedly, I was blessed with a rare quiet moment with my 22-year-old son this morning. He lives at home and commutes to college, but he also works almost full time and has his own set of friends so I don’t get to see him that much. I warned him that I was going to put him on the spot with a deep question. He inhaled as if to say, “Oh crap.” I then asked him what is my legacy for him? I also asked him to not sugar coat it; give me the bad with the good. As a people, we’re capable of being very direct, and that’s what I am looking for. However, things have been quite smooth for a while and we’re sitting in the same room, so I readily recognize that there will be a positive bias. But alas, I’ll take what he gives. Here’s what he offered up:

  • You are always available when I need help
  • You taught me determination
  • You taught me how to think for myself
  • You taught me how to find my own happiness

As my family woke up or stopped by home, I continued to ask the cringe-worthy questions. Here are the subsequent answers proffered. In all cases, I asked for the “yeah but” or the “what should I be working on?” Again, I recognize the unlikelihood that a younger person would be so bold. But it honestly is how I parent. Give it to me straight gov’na.

From my 18-year-old daughter:

  • Fantastic Dad
  • Funny; you consistently spread the joy
  • Wise; really good at framing life lessons
  • Supportive
  • You taught me the importance of finding my people

From my 12-year-old step-son:

  • Good guitar player
  • Understanding

From my 10-year-old step-son:

  • Good soccer player
  • Pretty great person

From my better half, wife, life coach and zen master:

  • You’re my favorite person to spend time with
  • You embody Continuous Improvement – as in, you’re always trying to get better. And I don’t mean that you’re trying to grapple for what’s next; I mean you’re always trying to be a better person, a better role model and help others get better too.
  • However, your attitude toward Continuous Improvement can make you come off as judgy. You do great with people who are striving to get better, but you can be impatient with people who feel stuck or trapped.

Obviously, I’m flattered. Given that I get to run around in my own head all day, I wouldn’t be so universally positive. I also think my wife was spot on. I need to work on my ability to be patient with people who aren’t ready to develop. But instead of focusing on that at the moment, I’m taking what I’m given because that’s what people offered up.

As I wrap up this post, I’ll ask you some of some of these same questions.

What is your legacy as it stands today? What would the people close to you say about you?

Or if you’re more inclined, please let me know what my blog says about me? What impressions has it made on you? And please, feel free to give me the goods, gov’na. I won’t get better unless I hear it straight.

I close with gratitude and a genuine wish for a Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there!

 

Ulysses: Calypso

Happy Bloomsday! Today is June 16, which is the day James Joyce’s Ulysses is celebrated around the world. In the last couple of years, I have taken to reading Ulysses and done my level best to wrap up the reading on June 16. This year I decided to blog about each episode along the way, which, as I have learned, dramatically slows the process. However, I’m also finding that I’m getting more out of the reading this time around, so I’m happy with the process. With that said, it is time for another installment.

Calypso

“In the act of going, he stayed.” In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is ensnared by Calypso on an island during his travels. The nature of the ensnarement isn’t all bad. Although Calypso is ego-centric and selfishly wants to keep Odysseus as her own, she is a beautiful goddess-nymph  and she generally treats Odysseus well. Their relationship is carnal. But after some time – Homer’s timeline has it at 7 years – Odysseus misses his wife Penelope and wants to make his way home. It takes an appeal to the gods and Hermès finally frees him at the behest of Zeus himself.

The Cast

Now in the fourth episode of Ulysses, we finally meet our hero, Leopold Bloom. Much like the earlier parts of the book, we’re treated to a continuum of thoughts and actions, although we are limited to reading the thoughts of Bloom and Stephen. We meet Bloom’s wife, Molly, and we learn that they have a daughter, Milly. We also learn that they had a son named Rudy who died in infancy.

Relatively speaking, there is a ton of action in this episode. We have rewound to start the day at 8 AM – this time with Bloom. He goes to the butcher to pick up a pork kidney and observes the Dublin of 1904 around him. He comes home and cooks breakfast, which is a bit of a gender role reversal for this timeframe. Bloom picks up the mail dropped from the mail slot, which includes a letter for him from Milly, a card for Molly from Milly, and a letter for Molly from the antagonist, Blazes Boylan. The Blooms have a conversation about reincarnation and several polite exchanges. Leopold then eats his own breakfast and heads to the outhouse to finish off his morning ritual. There are also several interactions with the family cat throughout.

Themes

There are themes aplenty in the Calypso episode. Like Calypso, the episode has sexual references throughout. Also like the goddess, who would have been a champion for women’s equal rights, we get the strong indication that Molly will soon stray from the marriage with Boylan and that Leopold is aware. Bloom gives a lot of thought about staying and going. 

Sexual overtones: Bloom notices his wife’s feminine form and features as he interacts with her. Bloom also takes notice of the “vigorous hips” on the next-door girl in front of him at the butcher’s shop and wishes the butcher would hurry so he could walk behind her towards home. It’s “Pleasant to see first thing in the morning.” His thoughts drift off to this woman having an affair with a constable. When he misses out on walking behind the lady, his thoughts drift to his wife, Molly and pleasant evenings of the past. Back home, he thinks of being near Molly’s “ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.” The reference to the word “yes” here also will have overt sexual tones once we get to the final episode and get the chance to spend some time with Molly’s thoughts.” Additionally in this episode, Bloom recognizes that his daughter Milly, who has turned 15 yesterday is coming of age. As he considers his wife’s interest in Blazes Boylan and his daughter’s interest in Bannon, he concedes that it is impossible to prevent in either case.

Staying and Going: For me, the most important sentence of the whole episode is, “In the act of going, he stayed.” This is Calypso in a nutshell – both in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses. This sentence comes after he notices the opened letter from Boylan tucked under Molly’s pillow. He has seen the flirtation between the two. He knows they’ll be working together and he knows his wife is interested in him. However, there are faraway thoughts throughout the episode as well. Bloom thinks of Molly’s father in the Middle East and in Gibraltar. He considers investing in the tracts of land offered in Turkey to be a farmer. Bloom considers the plight of the Jewish people (Bloom is a Jew), and also considers traveling for several weeks to Mullingar, which is where the daughter Milly is staying. But at the same time, Bloom is wavering back and forth about also staying. Notably, when he goes to the outhouse he thinks about the back garden and how the soil is bad. He has a distinct thought to “Reclaim the whole place.” I believe this is poignant. Joyce is showing us rather than telling us that our hero is conflicted about what to do. Should he stay or go? Or both? Like Odysseus, maybe he will go and then come back to “reclaim his rightful place.”

Other prominent themes in the episode include business, jews, and death. The prominent public event in the story involves going to the funeral of Patrick Dignam, who died suddenly in recent days. The episode ends with the words “Poor Dignam!” as Blooms thoughts shift on a dime to close.

In Contrast

When contrasted with the other 8 AM and simultaneous episode, Telemachus, in which Stephen Daedalus is the focal point, we see several stark differences. Bloom is older and more practical about his thoughts, while Stephen is more ego-centric or fanciful. Stephen is off contemplating the stars while Bloom is calculating return on investment. Bloom is considering “staying and going” in the face of his wife’s imminent stray from the marital bedroom while Stephen is holding a grudge over his friend’s comment that his mother was “beastly dead.” These contrasts demonstrate the mastery that Joyce had over the human psyche. By showing us a difference in maturity in human thoughts while interweaving so many other themes, Ulysses is perhaps the richest case of demonstrated human understanding in the literary world.

Photo credit: Odysseus und Kalypso by Arnold Böcklin (1883), by The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147930