On Second Thoughts

Introduction

Between August, 2010 and December, 2011, I wrote weekly an eleven-hundred word article on whatever topics caught my fancy, and published them on my personal web site. (www.charlesbechtel.com)

Although the exercise may appear self-indulgent, it had been — in actuality — necessary to the development of discipline.

Some writers are fortunate enough in their experience to have deadlines. Certainly there are some writers with deadlines who would call them anything but fortunate, but not this one. I love them, for they replace the necessity of being read with a necessity of being done, something that — for me, anyway — provides reason to write.

When I had began these columns, I had no audience save what I could provide myself. To write solely for oneself, though, has land mines aplenty, not least among them a sort of laziness. That laziness, the easy acceptance of what got done because there was no one else who may (not will) read that stuff is often the primary cause of bad writing, and zero development.

My mother had given me two pieces of advice, and I have taken both to heart. The first, Never sell what you like having because you need the money is irrelevant here, though well worth sharing. Her second, Never write anything down you don’t want everybody to read has proven priceless.

Once I elected to be a full time writer, I knew there would be miles of words to cover before I could sleep. I knew I’d need a powerful warm up to prepare me for what has followed them, and will continue to arrive: novels, novels, novels, stories after stories, sentences after sentences, even poems after poems.

What I had not expected, starting out, was the strange directions my thinking would take. The subtitle of these columns. Think the Unthoughted, has become my raison d’être. With a writer’s desire, I hope my discoveries may affect your thinking as well.

I have long considered Creativity as employed awareness. To write anything worthwhile, I had to increase my awareness of not only what has often been associated with given conditions or circumstances, but what had not been associated.

I had to think the unthoughted, or be no more than a run of the mill mind, which no artist can abide.

With hopes that I succeeded often, I ask you to follow me into the unthoughted.

It was an interesting trip.

Please note: e-Book formats often do not support footnoting, and hyperlinks can prove problematic. I have inserted useful footnotes into the text as parenthetically italicized text. Some hyperlinks remain.

On Second Thoughts:

the very first entry on its second life

Posted 8/12/2010

Once upon a time not so long ago I owned and operated a semi-regular news/rag called The Pitman News and World Report. As we ascribed to the nationally renowned expressions All the news that's fit to print and No news is good news, except in the newspaper business, we elected to upsize the typeface so there would be less news (or at least fewer words about passed and unaffecting events.)

That left room for other stuff. Among the other stuff was my column, which in a persnickety inspiration I called On 2nd Thoughts.

I thought the name was so clever, and so me, that I am electing to re-use it here, my first public outburst in nearly twenty years. (Why I stopped publishing may appear in another posting down the line. I still am thinking about the reason why I quit.) Revisiting what was once thought, either by me or by another (and then publicly expressed) seemed then, and does now, a noble effort, or one at least better than that made in re-watching past episodes of Bones.

I think it is fitting — and eminently clever — to have my first second thought be on On Second Thoughts; hence: what yer readin'.

The first Second Thoughts had been predicated on the notion that life improves upon reflection: The Uninspected Life is Not Worth Living, an old, sage phrase oft repeated to me by at least seven different college professors.

Moreover, if I could reach a cogent conclusion that may improve my life upon reflection, perhaps public dissemination of it may improve that of another, even perhaps many others, and therefore the world would, by increments, become a better place! I was ecstatic with joy (but not humility. It didn't jive with my Jesus complex.)

I have pulled back a bit from my first lofty aspiration. Now all I wanna do is maybe make a person chuckle, perhaps (o the glory!) catch someone reading this on an I-Pad on a train somewhere bursting out in mad giggles, with the possibility that maybe he or she, too, will have a second (and ultimately action-delaying) thought as well. Time will tell, if anyone deigns to make commentary on what I write.

Which leads me to ponder: If the I-Pad is designed so people can read books in book format, will a reader invented for the larger format of magazines and newspapers be called a Maxi-Pad?

Moving Away from All We Know

and Hold Dear

Posted 8/18/2010

Upon hearing that my wife and I plan to move 2500 miles away from where we have lived for most of our lives, many of our friends have a question at the ready. These questions vary, but generally fall into three variations; which one gets asked is dependent on which group the asker belongs.

The first, usually from the young and untraveled, is: Why Arizona? 

The question asked by the second and older group, from those who may be embarking on that part of life in which choices are many and the consequence of decisions weighty, is usually some form of Won’t you miss your family? 

The third group, made of our contemporaries in either age or condition (kids grown) almost always wonder How can you leave your grandchildren? Each question is expected, not unusual, and easily answered. 

What brings me to second thought is not a re-evaluation of my answers, but rather to why the questions come from each group with such consistency. The young and untraveled have yet to learn that there is a world beyond the mist of their understanding: most haven’t yet left the state, even the county, of their origin (Disneyworld does not count.) For them, any destination could replace Arizona, and the consequent look of bewilderment on each face would be the same. That they respond similarly gives me a clue as to why: the question’s nature derives less from concern about this deranged couple than from how our actions attack the asker’s sense of value.

The young, those who have not yet crossed the thresholds of leaving home, finding identity, finding mates and getting married, are stupefied by any prospect of someone blithely moving into the unknown, because they fear doing so themselves. (Stepping into the mist is scary, until you’ve done it enough times.) Those of the second group, the marrieds, the careerists, even the floundering, focus their question on that which they themselves most value: the building of a circle made of friends, coworkers, spouses and children, even lovers, who increase their sense of permanence by staying constant. (And nothing, ever, is more constant, or should at least be more constant, than one’s children.)

The last group, those who are my peers, recognize – because we all have experienced or are facing the loss of constants, the worst of which are losses by alienation, separation or death – focus instead on the only reward that appears left to us: the sense of continuity. As there had been me, so there will be mine. I detect the most horrific underlying motive they all suspect is our devaluation, willful and determined, of what to them is the last remaining joy and consolation: grandchildren. Not one grandparent among us fails to revel in the antics and noise of grandchildren. Even the grumpiest old fart still cracks a smile when the little one comes running. How can we depart, willingly and eagerly, from this our joy? What could possibly overtop that happiness?

So indeed, as Manuela and I believe that there is a greater joy to be had, will thus then our comrades — stupefied at our moving — have to re-evaluate their own lives so late in the game? My friends, unsuspectingly, think so.

This sense of having caused disruption by our actions has led me to have a second thought. Oh, not about leaving, but about Value.

The worst hurt to my understanding, when I was young, was any rejection of me (especially by a girlfriend.) Though unspoken, maybe even unformed, my cry at parting was always how could you leave, when I am still here? What I valued most, when young, was all that I had: me, my future, my possibilities.

As for my middle years: divorce, quitting jobs, even the secret life of those who either revealed themselves as homosexual or who had alternate sexual practices, alarmed all of my friends, who saw every step of individual expression as away from and at farther remove from what should be valued most in our middle years: stasis, constancy. (However I, with my continual rejection of everything static, for I had fallen in love with change, was a constant reminder to my friends that there were alternatives and other things to be valued. Sorry guys.) And now, among those in these later (last?) years, our 2500-mile move has either provoked envy (by those sick of what they have established) or disapproval (mild and gentle, in most cases.)

Envy or Disapproval shows up in how the question gets asked: the envious always ask Won’t you find leaving the girls hard? while the disapproving usually spurt out How can you leave your grandchildren?

I am certain that I do not want to bring forward in this public forum what could possibly overtop the joy of having three beautiful, intelligent and fun little girls who adore and worship me. To bring it forward merely subjects my more valued thing to either alliance (for those who seek the same) or condemnation (by those with whom my choice has hollow value.) To do so requests that my choice give defense, which it does not need and I do not want. (Though this valued thing of mine is not the same as Manuela's, I know that she has hers equally firm in her heart, and as her mate I not only support it I intend to help make it thrive, as is my job.)

Defending or uncovering what I value is not my intent in this essay. I seek only to share what I have discovered: What others do, what another thinks, always leads us to second thoughts about what we, ourselves, value. Always.

For indeed, what we hold dear we hold onto dearly. It's natural and expected that another’s unequal evaluation of what we hold dear will lead us to suspect that we might be holding too long to the wrong thing. Always, it is up to each of us to decide which of our well-held values are worth holding. For Manuela and me, we have discovered that our time has come to let go, for there are possibilities in the mist.

Doubt is the Foundation of All Learning

Posted 8/25/2010

Midpoint last week, after having written the last post, I felt completely certain as to what the next — this — would be. Today I am less certain. Soon after I had launched that post I saw an entry on FaceBook from one of my former students, a law enforcement person, protesting the erection of a mosque (now old news) at Ground Zero in NYC. He exclaimed that it would be a travesty to the memory of those fallen heroes of 9/11, to which I snappishly rejoined: "It would be no worse than erecting a church outside of an Indian Reservation.

I felt pleased at my wit, certain of my point, and ill at ease that I did a slap-down upon someone I not only like but consider one of the good guys. Although I think the analogy not only is good, it stands... as far as reason goes. But since then I have been giving his outrage, my comeback, and thoughts about heroism, a second thought. I shall first turn my attention to my student's shared outrage.

Before I do, a short preface: I have long believed that it is incumbent upon members of any majority to insure the thriving of any minority, even if its members oppose the tenets of the majority. Not really an original idea; I got it from some guy in the Bible who suggested we love our enemies. However, as I concluded in my prior post, what others do differently causes us to question ourselves. The existence of a minority will, then, always present the condition of doubt except in one instance: when the action of another is so heinous that it crystallizes our decisions to an impenetrable and unalterable hardness. In such cases Doubt is replaced by Certitude. I just think that is a dangerous condition, because no amount of logical thought, or substantial reconsideration, is heard or accepted. This condition leads to Fascism, and I have long despised that policy.

Although I think the building of a mosque, which (whether anyone likes it of not)serves as a physical representation of the unseeable faces of those who had brought down the Trade Centers, is an insensitive idea, I support the right of the builders to erect it. Sure, the symbol is not the thing, as the Semanticists always remind us, but semanticists are reasonable people using logical thought to arrive at such a point.

Sure, the Supreme Court has declared that a person has the right to swing his fist up until the point my nose is struck, but again the judges are reasonable people. Reason, used on unreasonable people, ain't gonna work. The presence of the mosque shouts out that not only was our nose struck, but that there are still swingers of fists out there taking aim again. The unreasonable, seeing the mosque as face, have concluded that the face fits the minority of Muslims, since the face of Extremists is so blurry. We can see Muslims (they're in the mosque) but we can't see the nut jobs (they're in the crowd hiding, somewhere, so it's better to take out the whole minority, just to be safe. And safety, or rather the protection of Undoubted Truth, lies at the heart of my student's protest. Which leads me to my rejoinder.)

I was using Reason, in the form of analogy, to transport my student (and anyone else of like mind) from his case-hardened position of Indignant and Outraged American to that of the Perpetrator of Heinous Acts. (Okay, Protester to Protested.) It's a very simple trick, most logicians know it.

Sometimes, however, it can get you a bloody nose (if you ain't with us, you're agin us!) I saw an opportunity to show a self-righteous Christian the close parallel he shared with a self-righteous Muslim, and I took it. (Fortunately, it was effective; he saw the parallel, and reconsidered. I am sure he still feels damaged by the fall of the towers on men and women also in his profession, but he also feels less strongly about damaging anything himself. He listened to reason, and that's a good thing.)

This leads me to the third point, the nature of Heroism.

Or rather the term, Heroism. I shall not delve into the definitions of the term, nor that which delineates an heroic act from a foolhardy one. Suffice it to be said that everyone who ran to the aid of those affected by the heinous attack acted altruistically (does something for another without thought of personal gain) to some degree, and to my way of thinking each is a hero. The term, heroism, however, seems always, in the case of 9/11, applied to those who not only made no personal gain but who lost mightily, either life or limb. To limit such accolade to only those is simplistic and as damaging: she also was heroic who turned to her son and daughter to explain that sometimes some bad people do some bad things in the name of many good people. He also was heroic who comforted his daughter, who called him to express massive pain and dislocation, with hope and faith in continuing goodness.

I seek to take nothing away from those who died, from those who suffered the loss of limb, by spreading thinner or more widely the idea of heroic. What I intend to suggest is that those who plunged into the destruction to save what could be saved deserve better than what is being given in this protest against the mosque. Not one, and I firmly believe this, hesitated at the thought of rescuing a living person, or recovering one dead, because the person rescued or identified could possibly have been a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Negro, or a Republican, or a... you get the point. We come to the aid of those who hurt, or who may suffer hurt, with no thought to our own gain, and that makes us heroes.

It has come time to consider that possibly, just possibly, that this Muslim minority needs protection, especially if it is protection from us.

The erection of the mosque, no matter how insensitively proposed, begs that the American Christian Majority doubt its beliefs now crystallized by righteousness. If it is built, it will serve to always ask those who oppose it to reconsider the beliefs, to have Doubt about Values, which is the only way those beliefs can be re-evaluated, and the values be re-invigorated. It may become a more healing a place than the proposed monument to a heinous act of a very few people. If so, it will serve the purpose of holy places: to heal the hurt, to give sanctuary to the harried, and to bring peace to the troubled. After all, isn't that the best reason to build a church next to an Indian reservation?

Obsessive? Compulsive?

You may be an artist

Posted 11/24/2010

Although self-diagnosis should never be recommended, one form of it is always within temptation’s reach: self-analysis. Those among us who may be narcissistic, self-involved, neurotic, or merely self-aware tend to spend a great deal of time cogitating on the causes or ruminating over the effects of one’s behavior. Whether this becomes fruitful, by changing bad behaviors or bringing forward one’s good practices is anyone’s guess. However, without this inward eye expressed outward, we’d be deprived of all those fun little teary-eyed apologias at the end of televised cooking competitions made by those booted, and we’d probably have far fewer poets among us. Certainly, the blog-o-sphere would shrivel.

Today, while I was using an old-fashioned handsaw to crosscut a piece of redwood (I was making a bench) I had a second thought as to why I was doing what I was doing. I wasn’t really making a bench; I was turning a Thing that I had long carried in my imagination into a Thing I could soon carry into my garden. Five years ago my wife and I had once enjoyed a memorable lunch in a small, sunlit courtyard to a Spanish café on the Mediterranean. Shaded grapes drooped from a poled arbor, a cat lay on warmed blue tiles, a trickle of water from an actual well served as background music. Behind my wife, against a wall whose plaster may have been trowelled on before Napoleon sent in troops, was a curious bench-like apparatus into which two large holes had been cut to receive and hold the tapered bottoms of terracotta water jugs. It had