I KNOW SOMEBODY WENT TO HARVARD

       jaap mooy, dutch, 1915-1987

What a day it has been. First thing, I go to lunch with a friend of 30+ years. Today was not the day for us to get together. He's my contrarian friend who is knee-jerk compelled to contradict whatever I or anyone else has said. I've seen this for so long, I'm used to it. I just give over to being disrespected regularly. I don't care. I prefer to stick with a friend through interpersonal differences. The major difference between friend and self is he takes his opinions very seriously, as fact. I don't take opinions seriously at all. I have them and express them, but don't believe them necessarily. I think of opinion as a belief about something that is based on little to no information. With plenty of information, it's not an opinion. Opinions are open to be right or wrong or neither. One day a year or so ago, I'd forgotten about his passion for his own opinions; he interrupted me, stating some opinion in reference to something we were talking about that didn't even pertain. I said, "That has nothing to do with anything." Whoa. Same thing happened today.



In our conversation over the table he'd already disrespected me half a dozen times. I pay it no mind, just consider the source, knowing how seriously he values his opinions. Today we were doing well. I let moments of disrespect go by several times. Like I mentioned my friends coming up from Atlanta today with their daughter and her husband. I mentioned both had recently received their PhDs from Berkeley. That elicited a snort. I said, "I'm impressed. I couldn't even get into Berkeley." Harumph: "I know somebody went to Harvard." I sat and thought: Aw shit, let it rest. It's a knee-jerk thing that he has to keep me reminded he knows more than I do, is more informed than I am, is superior in every way and every department. And I say, Ok, hooray, you're superior. You can piss higher than I can. I'm fine with that. Now that we know our places, can't we get on with our conversation? I have to confess I get tired of the reminders. He has a master's degree in science, just like Dr Science of the Duck's Breath Mystery Theater.



In the early years of knowing him, it drove me crazy sometimes. I'd get with myself in a serious way and tell myself to stay away from him, all he does is aggravate me with the ongoing brow beating that he knows more than I do, has better judgment than I have, has more interesting experience than I have. Hooray. I really am fine with it. I live in a world of people I believe superior to me in every way. I'm ok with it. I'm used to it. I like smart people. So we're sitting at the table and I've held my peace for an hour and a half or so. We were doing well. Then I said something about something I found on the internet. Harumph: "I know everything that's on the internet." That one broke the camel's back. I said, "You do not know everything that's on the internet." Phew. That one blew the volcano's stack. "I never said I knew everything about the internet." I held my ground. "Yes you did. Those were your words." "I didn't say that." Whatever. Within five minutes we'd paid and were out the door. I'd dissed him. Feces occurs.



Earlier the contrarian came up when he pushed me about painting abstraction instead of realism. I told him AGAIN that I paint for the people of the world I live in. I live in Alleghany County. I paint for the people of Alleghany County. Their aesthetic is recognizable realism, so that's how I paint. I don't live in New York, London or Paris. I live in Alleghany. I get reminded of past lectures on I should be painting for myself. I had to stress that I do not have room in my house. He writes for himself. Earlier he'd asked me about the process of starting a blog. I brought that up and suggested he not put his writing to himself in a blog, because then someone else might see it. I suggested if he wants to write for himself, write it all in a notebook and when it's full, throw it in the fire and start a new one. It's the only way you can be sure no one else will see it. Several times in the past I've got with myself about talking openly with him. But I tell myself if I'm going to be like that, stay away from him. Since I don't care to shit-can friends, I continue to go back for more. It's not hateful. Nor is it hurtful. Nor is it demeaning or rough on self esteem. It just is what it is. Two people in this world that know each other.


I'd missed my morning coffee, and the coffee ordered at the restaurant was awful. And it was luke warm. It was disgusting. I understood suddenly why we have coffee shops now. Restaurants can't make coffee anymore. If they ever could. I find restaurant coffee especially bitter for the most part, and when I drink some in a restaurant it's because I want coffee so bad I don't care how terrible it is. In a restaurant the first time, I usually order spaghetti, because most restaurants are incapable of screwing up spaghetti. Boil it and throw on sauce from a five gallon can. We left the restaurant and I wanted to go to Selma's for some real coffee and rational conversation. Did I ever jump into it there. A table with Tim, Joe, Todd and Mr Moxley engaged in conversation. I sat down and we proceeded to go into a subject I didn't know we all saw pretty much the same way on. The shop was full of people we'd never seen before. A constant flow of so many people it kept Selma busy, which we're all happy to see.



We had animated conversation over our own coffees we like, mine Kenyan done French press. Joe drinks good tea. All these guys have active, intelligent minds. I love listening to them talk with each other. I love being in conversation individually with all of them and all of them together. Not one of us plays I-know-more-than-you-do. That game is entirely absent from the coffee shop, anyway among us. I can't speak for the people going in there I don't know. I remember in the early months when we who call ourselves the "regulars" would tune out when someone came in we didn't know who started posturing. Not one of us is responsive to posturing. We're all glad we found each other. It would have been complete if Dudley had been there, but he's on his way back from Seattle. It was refreshing to have these guys to talk with, not one of them a contrarian, all, acutally, sympathetic with each other, minimal judgment going around the table, if any. I arrived home around 4, went straight to the bed, kicked off shoes, stretched out, covered up and stayed there feeling my nervous system worn out from talking and paying close attention for 4 hours. Too wired to sleep, I relaxed into inner stillness and stayed there long enough to let all that nervous energy spiral down the drain.



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SUNDAY AFTERNOON WITH FRIENDS

 a landscape of my world

one of ten trillion reasons i love the mountains

My mind is somewhat rattled after the day's big adventure. Wine and snacks at Joe's with about 10 others, all of us regulars at Selma's coffee shop in Sparta. I arrived late because I thought it started later than it did. Maybe an hour there talking and listening. From there most of us drove to Tom Guy's house on the side of Bullhead Mountain, for burgers, hotdogs, potato chips and chili. All of it good. Tom grilled on the deck. There, we sat on decks and ran our mouths, eating, and drinking wine or beer. Tom's house was built by him alone with hired help for aspects along the way in the construction he couldn't handle alone. It is a beautiful house, very well built, well designed. The outdoors consist of the woods coming up to the house, decks at different levels. It's a gorgeous place. Old mountain laurel and rhododendron around the house.



About 3 hours there talking with people I enjoy. We've become a small private club, Selma's regulars. We all like each other and even though Selma was not there, intended to be, but was having severe headaches, we had a good visit in the spirit of her coffee shop. We are the ones who love Selma. We're Selma's fan club. My friend Tom was there, who is writing a memoir of his experiences in a life of espionage. He's quite a character. I like to listen to him talk about some of what he got into. He doesn't talk much about the details of missions, though I don't think he's holding back, just hasn't got there. And it's not like I want him to tell things he's uncomfortable telling. I like to listen to him. I like some of his sayings, like, "When guns come out, run like hell. Moving targets are hard to hit." He told me of a time he was in a car somewhere in the Middle East being chased by "terrorists." He said his weapon of choice was a pistol grip sawed off shotgun, double barrell that shot 6 rounds. "Inside twenty yards you can't miss." When the terrorists were chasing him, 3 in the car, he hit the brakes hard, stopped the car, jumped out and blew them all away with his shotgun. Pop, Pop, Pop. He said, "I loved that shit."



He said now that he's retired he doesn't like guns anymore. I don't know him well, but can see him getting into some tight spots and having a thrill from it. He's a small guy with probably a very high rate of metabolism and had to be doing something high intensity to satisfy his fast mind and body that needed to be active all the time. I told him about a scene in the Steven Seagal movie I saw last week, The Keeper, where his girlfriend wants him to tell her what the trick is about a barroom game that impressed her. She put a long nail-like spike under an upside down tall paper cup and shuffled it around with 2 other cups. Three cups and one has a spike. She shifts them around. The trick is to pick one and hit it all the way to the table and it not have the spike in it. The cup he hit didn't have the spike. She was impressed. "How'd you know?!" He said he didn't know. 'The trick is, don't give a fuck." Tom bent over laughing, said, "Out in the field you can't give a fuck." He's lived his adult life going head first into death defying activity looking for information. In one place he was sent in as a telephone repair man who went into houses of insurgents remembering and reporting every detail he saw, who was there, what was going on.



He told me of a Russian operative who was sent to be a maid for 5 years for a US diplomat. Then she defected and went to work over here in the same field. Tom was saying that a time in Bogota, Columbia, he was talking with a guy who was a Communist there. The guy was telling him Soviet Union was a better place to live than USA. Tom said, you go down to the Russian Embassy when it opens in the morning, any given day, and see how many people are standing outside the gate to get in. None. Then go to the American Embassy and see a line of 500 people waiting to get in. He has a fairly large degree of patriotic zeal, though not political. He's all with USA right or wrong. I suspect a few degrees of his patriotism is the love for that kind of work and our government was his employer. He was a true believer. Give him the order, it gets done. I like to listen to tales of his adventures largely for his telling of them. He tells me about his experiences the way I want to hear it, the emotional involvement too. The fear charged him. He didn't like those moments of extreme fear, though he misses them and doesn't want any more, now that he's retired. I would like to live long enough to read his memoir when it's finished and published.



The weather was just right for outside on the deck socializing. Wine and getting lectured for smoking a cigarette. Clear sky with occasional puffy white clouds. On the way home I saw big pink clouds, the big ones, several miles high. In years gone by when I'd go into the woods to spend the day at and around the waterfalls, with blanket, book, paper, pen, for writing or sketching. The purpose, to stay a full day in one of the beautiful places in my world, sit there in reverence all day. Think and think until my thinking runs down and no-thinking sets in. Sitting there without purpose, no reason, but to stay or base myself on one spot, like a flat rock near waterfalls, especially one in the stream. I have several places along the creek, all the creeks around here, where I like to sit and let my mind settle. Driving home I saw a mirror smooth pond beside the road that set me to thinking about zen mind, the polished mirror, the water smooth as glass. It was a circle in the meadow of the sky's perfect reflection. I wanted to stop and get a picture, but somebody was behind me and I chose not to. It brought to mind a haiku by Japanese poet Basho:

It is fall and a full moon.

I walked around

the shore of the pond all night.

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