VOYAGE TO WINDWARD

To those unacquainted with sailing, a vessel beating to windward always looks erratic.

— Joseph Furnas, biographer of Robert Louis Stevenson

Life, as you may have noticed, is a voyage to windward. Everything good in it lies at the exact point of the compass from which the wind is blowing, which means you have to tack, zigzag back and forth close-hauled into the wind, gaining only a little forward progress on each tack.

What seems to be an erratic course is in fact the fastest, the only, route to your destination.

GOD

God never gives us what we want. It amuses him instead to give us better things than we have the wit or wisdom to ask for. People find this presumption on the part of the deity incredibly annoying.

MY MOM

. . . is in her eighties now. After a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice as a wife and mother of five, she now lives mostly on Social Security, on which she pays no federal income tax.

Mitt Romney recently described her, on that basis alone, as one of those Americans who see themselves as “victims” and who refuse to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”  So much for a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice.

I’m quite sure he hasn’t got the balls to say that to my mom’s face, or to mine.  He only insults decent people like my mom when he thinks he’s talking privately to other rich weasels like himself who secretly despise her for not being as rich as they are.

The only thing as shocking as Romney’s words is the fact that his audience didn’t boo him off the podium or leave the room in disgust and rage — and that there are still people in America who would like to have a man like that as their President.

When my revulsion at Romney’s horrific depravity reaches the limits of what my own command of language can express, I turn to Bob Dylan’s song “Early Roman Kings” for the words I need.  Thanks, Mr. Dylan.

They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers,
They buy and they sell,
They destroyed your city,
They’ll destroy you as well.

If you don’t stop them.

[Photo of my mom by Libba Marrian]

BANANA CREAM PIE

From time to time I treat myself to a lovely, disgusting banana cream pie, but this creates a problem — as long as it’s in the house I don’t really want to eat anything else.

Looked at in a certain way, though, that’s not really a problem at all.

IN THE RAIN

I just reread chapters XIII and XIV of A Farewell To Arms — describing the night Frederic Henry says goodbye to Catherine Barkley in Milan before catching his train back to the front.

Hemingway uses his clear, direct prose like a sharp instrument to engrave the scenes in your mind. They become like memories of something you’ve actually experienced, and at the same time a vessel for all the memories of sad farewells to lovers that you really have experienced.

It’s an amazing piece of writing, beautiful and magical.