Fast and Cool

What really matters... You gotta be cool... 

Three years ago (3/31/2015 -- "Up and Down the Dial"), I posted about the #SiriusXM satellite "highway"—taken each night; sometimes holding my sanity together on the parking lot known as Houston traffic, descending like a femoral artery into downtown.

The alchemy of memories and music transports me back on a tightrope time-machine to a place when we were all pretty "kewl", if I can say so myself. “Fast and Cool” as in the club, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, for movie buffs.

Maybe a long time ago, but I remember when we were buff and the feathered haircuts fell just right on starched oxford button-downs. The girls all dressed for each other, and the wild night was calling. There was a time, back in my prime, when your old-man could really lay it down; but we didn’t rely on Instagram or Facebook to show everybody. It was sealed in our memories.

The music, tasting the rum, giving or getting all the jokes; ok, crank up the car stereo, and take off. The feel of a slow-dance with that girl you like… in the end, there's only the dance. How did the years go by so fast but the memories play back so slow? The smell of a ski boat's exhaust, a bonfire; I can hear the roar of the crowd, or the whisper in the ear. Youthful discovery is like electricity, but the assurance of wisdom is comforting. Life’s a balance in every decade. Maybe my pendulum needs to swing back to happiness; time flies whether you’re having fun or not.

It could be the passing of an old friend recently, or the end of a long week sending me on this journey, but my “trigger” is often just the right song, which takes me to the file cabinet in my head: pulling out the right disk from the right decade. We manually take it out of the sleeve and place it on the record player, crackling and hissing with expectation. Easter is the season of passage from death to life. The memories linger tonight in the “bardo” or in-between: I don't try to reconcile the past, but I do go back.

Without a physical photographic record on social media, how do I prove our youth? We were from all over the state, and the world was much more laid back. Somehow we had enough money to pool our resources as a group; supporting a large social structure consistently together to have a good time, and act “big”. I went to high school and college with the fast and cool crowd, always looking for adventure, maybe we were like the Club Gryffindor before we knew about Harry Potter. Or it might have been a middle-child syndrome, seeking to fit-in?

I would like to think of those foolish, happy days not as my last fling, despite the age and the miles. I believe that there are new beginnings in every springtime; I’d like to be happy again. Maybe we can get together and shake off the worldly blues and stride out tomorrow with the same arrogant confidence we had in our twenties, when everything was possible?

Probably not, but at least give the same swagger. I have more money and less hair. My car is not as hot, but more reliable. I’m more educated, but hopefully wiser. The songs seem more poignant now; the friendships deeper and more valuable. At least we can commiserate rather than compete—like we did back in those heady days. I don’t want to impress anyone like we used to, I’d rather show humility and kindness than competence and success. My heart yearns to express connection, admit defeat, listen with an attentive ear, be slow to speak, quick to squelch my opinion, easy to talk to, or ask for a favor.

“Grief” and its verb “grieve” come from the Latin gravis, “heavy, weighty” and its verbal form, gravare, “to burden or cause to grieve.” Grieving is like being weighed down with sorrow and a sense of loss. “Mourn” has its origins in the Old English murnan, “to mourn, to be anxious”. Jung says that mourners are fortunate because they are involved in a growth process, that “even though it cost me a great deal to regain my footing; now, I am free to become who I truly am.” (end quote) This is God’s truth, because the more I’ve cried and felt wretched and worthless, the more often I've felt on-a-passage (journey), and that I could have occasional moments of utter joy.

I think we know now how elusive confidence really is; the escalator has made some unexpected stops. Values now drawing respect are affinity, realism, collaboration, servant-leadership, empathy, kindness, faith, relationship, and humility. Money, beauty and power are not only elusive but ephemeral. Age tends to level the playing field even for those who woke up on third-base. (you know who you are).

Character is formed in the crucible, but everyone yearns for a second-chance; like the magical saying under the pyramid, on the back of a one-dollar bill: novus ordo seclorum (“a new order for the ages”). That’s what's astonishing about Easter; with Christ there is always the opportunity to brush yourself off and start again. His work on the cross gives us new life, forgiveness in exchange for our brokenness. This year I will relish in free grace, give thanks for true friends: “put that one on His tab, please…” 

I need to write off a few things, people, and losses, starting again with a clean ledger; don’t we all? Happy Easter.

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Book Review: Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch series)

Book Review: Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly 

(Harry Bosch series)

(Los Angeles) Who has the time or money to read books anymore? The sturdy hardcover, paper versions are $30/apiece, maybe you can save some cash by downloading it on your Kindle® but it still takes time to finish 400-pages. 

Here’s my quick proposition for the latest Michael Connelly book: save the cash and check it out from the local public library, because this one you won’t be able to put down!

Why review the 30^th novel of one of the most famous crime fiction novelists of our time? Because his books interweave prior characters, including his famous series starting in 1992 involving a hardened, over-60 retired LAPD detective, Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. In the past few installments, I have to reveal that the author has disappointed me a little, so I was skeptical. 

I’m not throwing Michael Connelly under the bus, to use a hackneyed phrase or “today’s terminology” as an old lawyer claims reluctantly in the current book: “Two Kinds of Truth” (Little Brown, 2017); however, after finishing this 20^th installment in the Harry Bosch series in about 48 hours, it felt right to sing his praises and yell out to readers in the earshot of this blog, “Harry’s back!”

Two of Hollywood’s most popular recent films, Last Jedi and Wrinkle in Time, took over an hour to get to the launching point of the story’s action. That’s an awfully slow Part One, making for a long afternoon in both experiences. Connelly uses half the pages to finish Part One, but this time I was thankful for a thorough introduction to the action involving two major story-lines: one is ripped right from the headlines of TIME® magazine and the other is very personal to Harry Bosch and hence the title of the book. Unable to compare the book to those films, let me warn you that the next 30% of the novel (Part Two) flies-by like a juiced up Yamaha® crotch-rocket through L.A. traffic on the 101.

Part Three (18%) smartly closes up the story and gets into the psychological side of Harry Bosch’s worldview, appealing to police-procedural fans who take the time and spend the money to follow this popular series. Harry’s point of view relates to what many people think about criminal law, when they either ponder it or are brought-in against their will to a system which unfortunately emulates the world around us. It also gives the reader a peek behind-the-front-desk, into the complicated, layered reality of police work.

“What’s this world about, Harry?” the police chief asks. Bosch explained what happened that week and also added that the truth was, it felt like to him he was walking in circles: “true justice was the brass ring just out of reach.” Echoing Raymond Chandler, Connelly reflects Harry's angst: Vietnam War veteran who closed homicide cases for 30-years on the mean streets of Los Angeles, forced into retirement by department politics, feeling empty when facing the enormity of the evil in the big city, or even the small suburb of San Fernando where he's landed. The author's power comes, however, in the masterfully consistent, genuine "character" of Harry Bosch played out once again in Two Kinds of Truth; it's why readers keep up their relationship with him by their loyalty:

"“To be a character” is to maintain a few qualities, nourish them to excess until they dominate and dictate all others. A character is delineated and thus generally delimited. To “have character” is to have reliable qualities, to hold tightly to them through the temptations to swerve and change. A person of character is neither bribed nor corrupted; he stands fast, is steadfast." From The Identities of Persons (1976) by philosopher Amelie Rorty. (quote not about Harry Bosch)

As an executive producer, Connelly branched out into an AmazonPrime® TV-series called Bosch, starring Titus Welliver as the eponymous character; which in full-disclosure I have not been able to watch. Nevertheless, based on the latest novel which I highly recommend, I’ll be back in the hunt for his next fictional episode in 2018, featuring a new character working with Harry, Detective Reneé Ballard, in Dark Sacred Night.    ## 

2018©Mark H. Pillsbury

Paris Stories: Unlearn What You've Learned (Part IV)

Unlearn What You've Learned (Part IV):

(Paris) Along with differences in age, language, size, and demeanor; between us walked our constant companion, his art. Training alongside the verbal, linear logic of legal precedence, my companion spun mathematical formulas out of his mind into symmetrical circles of exacting care, drawn softly with pencil and later illuminated with black & white acrylic paint.

As the practical, grounded, first-born daughter of an accountant and a classroom English teacher, my style epitomized the ascending power of the American Female Lawyer. It is true that women still struggle in the workplace for equality, but my experience was like a clear, fortunate passage into a profitable career.  At the same time, Gabriel showed me how an unorganized giant, uncomfortable in his own skin, could give his art the hyper-focus it demanded; producing large scale paintings that drew your eye into a tunnel of precision, a mystical maze of fastidious circles.

His art bloomed out of more than a mere triquetra (trinity knot), it subtly revealed the sacred artistic geometry of life; exact, mathematical, but more than just slide rules and protractors. Exhibiting the formulas of Fibonacci and the ancient truths of a sunflower’s pattern of seeds, the paintings communicated the consistent, repeatable thread of life going back to the beginning—the historic symmetry of the human struggle.

[artist and author]

Drawing by hand, sequences appearing to have come from a CAD drawing and a laser printer, Gabriel believed the complete, ancient flower of life formed an inter-dimensional tool, like a portal. Meditation showed him a mental window into what some call the inter-space plane. Not only therapeutic, his mind now had a factory in which to process traumatic stress that had once destroyed and dismantled his natural genius. He patiently waited, unbridled the yoke of mental illness, practicing his art with hope, and what Cameron calls our true nature:

"No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity. . . . I have come to believe that creativity is our true nature, that blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem." (end quote) by Julia Cameron 

Gabriel created two series of curves winding in opposite directions, drawing with a fine mechanical pencil. Beginning at the center, they stretched out to the widest part of his canvas like petals. With each seed-shaped unit sitting at a certain angle from the neighboring seeds, he demonstrated the precision of a spiral, which exists everywhere in the physical universe. The angle found in the “flower-of-life” is the universal “juste-milieu”; yet, it is the most irrational number imaginable for such a drawing, a feeble approximation of a fraction. This number is sometimes called the golden mean, or the golden angle, which is 137.5⁰.

Aristotle thought the angle was the middle point between extremes, e.g., if courage is a virtue, its excess could manifest in one extreme as recklessness, and in deficiency, cowardice. The Greeks thought the golden mean was artistically beautiful but at the same time closely associated with mathematics, being both beautiful and true. Because the best known group of American artists are usually said to be the abstract expressionists of the “New York” style, my artistic palate wasn’t typically exposed to this degree of exactness, but I guess the lawyer in me liked it? Gabriel helped me realize that the artist often must "unlearn" what she has learned, in order to know her path. ##

Fiction ©Mark H. Pillsbury