Hey there, good buddy, how ya doin? Long time no see! You look great! I mean, all things considered – just kidding! I love your new tats, somebody’s got to keep the memory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles alive! I know we gotta lot to talk about, like how it’s going wherever it is you moved to – was it Minneapolis or Anchorage? Or did you finally get that little beach place down in Baja that you were always dreaming about? You still surfing, or working on the Great Surfing Novel you used to talk about? It’s kind of hard to keep up with you, as you know, which is just the way you like it, or so it seems. Too much personal information can complicate things, I suppose.
So we can save the personal stuff for later or maybe never, which leaves a whole lotta other topics-of-the-day, like shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings, stuff like that. I can tell from the look you’re giving me that you’re not a fan of Lewis Carroll, so never mind. You still a Sox fan? Yeah I know, after 2004 they didn’t have much left to prove, beating the hated Yankees in the greatest comeback of all time, and following that up with a Series win that broke the Curse of the Bambino. When this old world starts getting me down, I just think about those glorious days and everything’s okay for a little while – I don’t need to go up on no stinkin’ roof, know what I mean? A movie nut like yourself must surely know that line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre? It’s a classic.
Speaking of movies, somebody like you must’ve seen Everything Everywhere All at Once by now, so wadja think? Everybody I know pretty much hated it, said it was too chaotic and confusing and violent, which it sort of was, I suppose. But after seeing it and expecting the worst, I was left with a new appreciation for how sometimes it might be a good thing, now and then, to simply let go of the need for things to constantly make sense, to let it all get bewildering and weird and to try and make sense of that. Yeah maybe that sounds kind of crazy, so welcome to my world!
That great Talking Heads flick put the concept out there in a big way – I mean you can’t say it more bluntly than Stop Making Sense! But that was about a music concert, and you had the tune and the rhythm to carry you along if the lyrics got too obscure or nonsensical at times. And of course you were supposed to be dancing and reveling in some kind of Dionysian celebration. Face it, the ancient Greeks – all ancient peoples, really – knew how to party. Hey, it’s in our genes!
Everything, on the other hand, is celebrating something else entirely, wouldn’t you say? For one thing, multiverses. You know, what quantum physics tells us is the real skinny on how it all works. Who’s to say there’s not a lot of chaos and confusion – and yes, violence – at the subatomic level, and the rest of the “real” universe can only reflect that? You ever try to read a book on quantum physics? The one for dummies, of course. How much sense did it make to you, pal? Yeah the movie played around with some of these concepts and I can’t tell you if they didn’t make a mess of it, but lemme tell you that for me none of it was less intelligible than that physics book for dummies, and it was quite a bit more memorable. I mean, the whole bit with the “everything” bagel is stamped forever in my mind, and it makes me smile. Yeah, you’re smiling too so you know what I’m talking about. Stop Making Sense made me smile, too, but it was a different kind of smile, know what I mean?
And face it, the story line that held it together – though “held together” might be kind of a stretch – was about family and relationships, the ways the mom and the daughter and the husband and everybody else got along, or didn’t get along, or tried to get along. And yeah this all became really bewildering and confusing – I mean the nutty violent tax lady made it really confusing but wasn’t she a hoot? That Jamie Lee Curtis has still got it, wouldn’t you say?
So maybe I’m going out on a limb here, or proclaiming how much of a dummy I really am – and proudly – when I tell you that human relations might not exactly be quantum physics, but then again maybe on some level they really are, because it’s all the same universe! You can tell me that the physical universe and the emotional universe have little or nothing in common, but how can you be so sure? We live in both at the same time, and you can’t get away from that! Yeah, maybe I’m oversimplifying things a bit, and maybe the film was mostly a lot of hooey, but it made me think about things in a new way, like what life’d be like if my fingers were hot dogs. Kind of a cool concept, so long as they’re decent plant-based product and it doesn’t hurt to bite one off now & then and there’s plenty of good Dijon around in which to dip them. Oh, and that they grow back in a timely fashion. What’s that? Sure, it’s okay with me if yours are all-beef kosher, whatever you like, they’re your fingers. And yeah, that was maybe the weirdest part of the movie.
So when it comes to alternative realities and stuff like that, you’re a big fan of The Matrix, right? As for me, I still say Keanu Reeves peaked in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which was just another alternative reality flick when you think about it. And as alternative realities go – and this might sound strange but, hey, this is me! – The Matrix had too many simple answers about How it All Works. Red pill, blue pill, give me a break! You are so right, let us not get started on that, and thank you!
So maybe we should just talk about the weather? Where it’s all about chaos and calamity and what have you? Remember back when it was the best conversation starter? The “safe subject” about which everybody had something to say but no way would it lead to somebody’s despair or a fistfight or anything like that? Or a Kung Fu match, if you lived in The Matrix? Well, you’ll get no complaints or martial arts moves from me if it’s about Boston this past July! Quite the contrary, mon ami. As a Bostonian might say it, it’s been one wicked bee-yoo-tee-full July! Instead of the usual miserable heat and humidity and drought, where the city bakes and and the rivers and brooks dry up and any plant not watered either looks pathetic or disappears altogether, this year we got rain rain rain and just a few little heat waves where it barely broke ninety and the whole place just looks lush, or should we say wicked tropical?
Just a couple of years ago in July we got a little over ten inches, whereas the average is just a bit more than three. It was amazing! The all time record for July in Boston is something like eleven and a half inches, set in 1921, a hundred years ago. And this year – look out! – we just got almost ten and half, making it the second rainiest July ever, at least in the record books! I mean, we’re going full Miami around here, where anything that pumps up the green in our little urban heat sink is always good news. What’s that? You say this is just proving the scientific predictions about the Northeast due to the warming planet? Yeah yeah I know, and I’m just sayin’ that you won’t hear this guy complaining about it. Not this year, anyway.
Of course speaking of predictions it was also the hottest July on record for most of the rest of planet earth, not so good. Hey, you’re not living in Phoenix, are you? Well I’m glad to hear that, but this summer there are a lot of places roasting in the heat in a whole new way. Just be glad you weren’t at the Boy Scout Jamboree – let’s just say things were steamin’ in Saemangeum, if you know what I mean. And who knows if the Boy Scout Handbook covers how to deal with 115º temperatures, day after day? Maybe the next edition will address that topic, along with a few other things, like surviving monsoon rainfalls and flash floods and cyclones and tornadoes, stuff most campers in the past didn’t have to think about too much.
And what about those hundred degree ocean temperatures off Florida? Or the sea ice disappearing at the poles at a rate that’s getting kind of scary? I gotta tell you that when I first heard about all this, in what seems like a long time ago, I never doubted the worst was coming and that it was going to be bad as well as sad and there was going to be a whole lot of procrastination about doing anything drastic to change it, despite the hysteria of some of the scientists. I knew in my heart that those showing the most concern and demanding the utmost urgency were the ones who had it right, and that they’d get paid some lip service and there’d be a few token gestures of change but other than that, nada. Yeah that was quite awhile ago, and might we say the “negative trajectory” regarding these matters has not taken any drastic turn upwards, far from it? Those in-the-know about these things – and I am not talking about the politicians or the business people or even the save-the-planet fanatics – are talking about “nonlinear” and “compounding” impacts of all these crazy changes taking place, while the procrastination shows up endlessly on the news. Lotsa new coal plants and drilling permits for oil, and other same-old same-old in the name of sparing people from too rude a shock to their lifestyles. Maybe there’s no way for big change to come about, anyway.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret that shouldn’t surprise you. My ace-in-the-hole strategy for coping with the coming catastrophes, and the despair-inducing sadness and anger about the inevitable, was the assumption that I’d be dead before it all happened, at least the worst parts of it. Call me a coward or simple-minded or too hopeful in the most perverse of ways, but as it turns out I’ve got no aces but more like a lousy pair of deuces, and the catastrophe is arriving, shall we say, way ahead of schedule, following the more dire predictions with even a few surprises thrown in.
You heard of AMOC? Sounds kind of like “amok”, as in things running off the rails. Chaos! Mayhem! Godzilla and King Kong ran amok, and the possible slowing or even total stalling of the Gulf Stream is now being darkly suggested and that it might take place in the next few years, a level of “amok” we can hardly imagine. It might suddenly get awfully cold here, in what is currently tropical Boston. God knows what will happen in all those northern European countries that’ve had moderate climates since the ice age. Oh yeah, it stands for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and you’re welcome to find the details in all those places you look for details. But hey, we got new skis last year! Maybe there’s a small bit of joy in this after all, at least for a few of us!
So you’ve been mighty quiet. Maybe you forgot I could carry on like this! I hope I’m not one of the reasons you left town, but it is interesting you’ve never offered your new address! What’s that? If you told me you’d have to kill me? Let’s just say I hope you’re enjoying the change in the weather where you are and leave it at that. And wait, I know you’ve gotta go, but let me leave you with “one more thing”, as Columbo used to say, just so you don’t get the wrong impression.
You a fan of Rodgers and Hammerstein? Yeah they’re pretty old school and kind of a mixed bag. Anyway I’ve always been kind of a fan of South Pacific, maybe because my parents dragged me to the movie back in the ‘50s, and even as a kid the music stuck in my brain. And it was about WWII, and like many little boys of the ‘50s I loved that war. There were all the Hollywood movies and the documentaries and our dads had all been heroes, just because they were part of it. Would you believe South Pacific opened on Broadway the year I was born? Maybe that means something. Of course besides the war and the usual romantic stuff, it’s also about racism, which of course went totally over my head at the time. I mean, I remember the song You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught and you can bet it made no sense when I saw the movie the first time. That’s a really edgy song for 1949, and of course it’s a timeless commentary on the human condition. So sad. But there it was on the Broadway stage, as a song in a big time musical no less, and ain’t that something? It truly is.
But there’s also this song in the play, A Cockeyed Optimist, that you might not think of as edgy. Nobody uses the word “cockeyed” nowadays, that’s for sure. Mary Martin or Mitzi Gaynor sings it, take your pick and don’t forget it’s like really old school. I forget how the song fits into the context of the plot, but with lines like I have heard people rant and rave and bellow/ That we’re done and we might as well be dead, who’s to say what the heck is going on? And how about: Some say the human race/Is fallin’ on its face/And hasn’t very far to go/But every whip-poor-will/Is sellin’ me a bill/And tellin’ me it just ain’t so. Like where did that come from?
Sure it’s stupid and corny on the face of it, and the singer admits this in so many words: I’m stuck like a dope/With a thing called hope/And I can’t get it out of my heart. Hey, it’s Rodgers and Hammerstein and it’s Broadway seventy five years ago! And in this great nonsensical multiverse of ours, running on hard-edged physical principles we will never completely understand, who’s to say those whip-poor-wills don’t have it right in some larger sense? It is also true that it’s turning mighty ugly in the current moment, and is bound to get much uglier in the near future, don’t kid yourself. Just ask the millions of climate refugees on the move across the planet, if you don’t believe it.
What our species seems to be demonstrating is what I like to call the Catastrophic Theory of History, which dictates that people take the appropriate measures, no more no less, to deal with the corresponding catastrophe of the moment. Or they don’t, and it all falls apart and the catastrophe does them in. At some point all the minor tweaks currently in play will have to give way to some major changes in the way the prosperous among us live or that’ll be it, so sez I. Electric cars and solar and wind and heat pumps are not going to steer us away from this cliff; it’s gonna take a whole lot of other changes that will be, shall we say, a bit more disruptive or even painful, for some. Yes I see you nodding in agreement. I knew there was some reason why we were friends, besides you being a very patient listener. A guy like me needs friends like that, but don’t we all? And I can tell you’re no more of a cockeyed optimist than I am, but I suspect you know as well as I that a true skeptic is open to all possibilities, no matter how positive or unlikely or even totally cockeyed. The multiverse dictates that all we ever have is the faintest idea about anything, in the end, and isn’t that comforting?
So have a great trip back to wherever it is you live, and I hope it’s as beautiful there as it is in Boston in this moment, where the wise never leave the house without an umbrella or a rain slicker. In fact there’s a chance of rain right now, so what else is new, and who’s to say what the future really holds for all of us? All we can do is wait and see, and try and do the right thing, and good luck to us all, ‘cause we’re gonna need it. And a little optimism doesn’t hurt, as nonsensical as it seems.
