Lost/Loss

14 October 2021

[Above photo:  Sunset from Northport Island.]

Humans, or many of them, seem perched on the edge of violence. We’ve concluded the wars, largely, in Afghanistan and Iraq and, mirabile dictu, there are murmurs and whispers of a civil war at home. Like high schools, whose optimal maximal size is estimated to be 1200 (I’m not sure how they come to that figure.), would we be more peaceful in small (100+) bands of hunters and gathers?  But then we wouldn’t have washing machines and TV’s!  Our technological progress has outstripped our social evolution, as others have noted, creating dangerous conditions. I think of DT as a 6yo who got into his daddy’s Cointreau and now is driving a schoolbus filled with children down a curvy country two-lane road.

Watching the Frontline documentary on the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear that: 1) might makes right and, 2) many there aren’t democratically inclined, given their traditions and religion. My point is, if we hadn’t waged a starry-eyed war we could have limited our objectives to those achievable and would not have imagined, as Condoleezza Rice still asserts, that we could drag them into the 21^st century.  Our recent knowledge of epigenesis would tell us the same.  It is, however, heartbreaking to witness those who have evolved to want a more equitable and enlightened society crushed by the “traditionalists”. It’s a truism that women generally come out on the bottom of the pile when “Our traditions”  or “Our religion” are fiercely asserted.

I drove up the coast to thin out my storage space in Bar Harbor. The leaves are turning and it was difficult to keep my eyes on the road, so stunning were the colors. En route I stopped on Southport Island to visit a friend from high school, Louise, and her partner, Peter. They were staying at a darling ancient cottage, 50 feet from the water’s edge, which is part of his family’s vacation compound. A bench is perched on the rocks and we enjoyed a glass of wine as we watched the sun sink. They are both retired academics. She was one of the first to successfully sue for gender discrimination in promotion (at Brown University), after which she moved to a tenured spot at the University of New Mexico. It was a good locale for an anthropologist. They made a delicious supper, Peter cooking the swordfish to perfection, and we chatted for a long time. Louise convened our East Denver High School Class of 1958 gatherings in the Bay Area when she would visit each year, reconnecting me with friends who assumed I was dead. Once when a class mailing was sent to my mother’s address, it was returned “Deceased”, referring (I’m pretty sure.) to my mother.  

After supper I drove to my daughter’s a few hours north and east, mildly wine-deadened as I negotiated the two-lane backroads seemingly forever. When the white lines at the road’s margins are absent, it is terrifying to come over a rise, on a turn, facing the glare of an approaching car’s headlights.  Enough of those experiences made me determined not to drive, except locally, after dark unless on a freeway.

And to think, in college four of us would drive for 30 hours straight in a VW bug, all 38 horsepower, from Cambridge to Denver 3x per year! Two of those annual trips might include considerable snow, at Christmas and Spring Break. West of Chicago, there were only two-lane roads.  We were astoundingly fortunate.  If we travelled in the summer months, we’d often pull a few miles off the highway and put down a tarp in a pasture or another rural bedroom. 

It recalls the time in medical school I drove directly from NYC to Denver in 28 hours. I was doing a “driveaway”, delivering a car for an academic moving to the University of Colorado (Boulder). It was a small Oldsmobile. I had enough money for gas and for food or a motel, but not for both. The day before I left someone had been found cut up in bits in a bush in Central Park, so I wasn’t eager to sleep alone in an unknown meadow. Lots of coffee saw me safely home.

After sleeping at Ari’s, we drove to my storage space in Bar Harbor. Upon arriving, I realized that when I moved into my new apartment, I put three new house keys on my keychain and removed the two storage locker keys. Fortunately, I had a spare set at Ari’s so I dropped her and Pearl off to climb Parkman Mountain and I, feeling very stupid, drove two hours roundtrip to retrieve the spare keys. We then loaded some heavy family furniture into her truck, taking it to her home.  The next day we humped it up to the second floor of her barn.  I was amazed at how strong she is.  I am always surprised that I am not as strong as I used to be, despite being in pretty good shape for my years.

Returning to my storage space the next day I made 4 piles: photos, paintings, and kitchen stuff for my current apartment; a car-load to the Goodwill in Blue Hill; a much-reduced number of boxes to move to a smaller storage space near or in Portland; and trash bags full for the dump. The rodents ate and urinated a lot over the past few years, destroying a fair bit.

As little attached to possessions as I imagine I am, when I finally got out of a long shower at my apartment I was horrified to note that my bracelet, a macramé affair with 5 18C gold charms, was missing from my left wrist. I’ve worn it continuously since my first graduating class in Myanmar gave it to me two years ago. It must have slipped off when I removed my fleece, which has tight elastic cuffs. I did that here in my apartment, in the guest bedroom at Ari’s, and at the storage space.  The first two have been searched to no avail, so I’ll make the 3 hour trip up today, spending the night, to look for it.

I think it is an especially painful loss since my work in Myanmar was interrupted and much of what I enjoyed there is completely unavailable to me with the coup.  I continue to receive regular US Embassy Security Alerts; today US citizens are requested to leave 3 townships in lower Burma immediately because of the dangerous conditions. I know the bracelet is simply a symbol of the exchanges I had with my students, our mutual learning processes and our laughter together. Still, when I think of their limited financial means and the feelings they invested in getting it for me, I am upset. I still may find it, however.  It obviously also triggers my feelings of other lost attachments: mother, father, brother, marriage, son. memory, coordination, strength, endurance. Yikes!

Then I think of the Afghanis, the civilians in the country, and my self-pity vanishes.

[Note: I made the trip to Bar Harbor again and searched for the bracelet to no avail. In going through boxes I surprised two mice nesting in them. I baited 4 traps with peanut butter and set them before I closed up the space. If I had shed my attachments, I could have coexisted happily with them. Actually, come to think of it, I wouldn’t even have the storage space!]