“Well, basically…”

[Excerpts read by Noah Adams on NPR’s All Things Considered June 22, 1995]

I am the Chairman of the National Committee to Stamp-out the Word “Basically.” What used to be a somewhat innocuous adverb has turned into one of the most predominant, albeit useless, words of the last decade. Emulating a fast-spreading cancer, it has infiltrated the speech of the majority of the English-speaking world. In an attempt to sound erudite, and “groping toward imagined elegance” (as William Strunk, Jr. wrote in the original Elements of Style), everyone from produce clerks to our leaders in Congress misuses and abuses the word. Its prevalence exceeds even the poor, worn-out “Well, ….” When asked a question, an employee of mine always used to begin her answer with, “Well, basically….” She could not function without that phrase. I once challenged her to eliminate both words from her vocabulary for five minutes. She couldn’t do it — she was reduced to a stuttering, quivering mess. To this day the word “basically” is outlawed in my office. If a courier, a water delivery man, or a photocopy machine technician happens to drag the word in from the outside, my crew emulates all sorts of alarms and sirens, putting the entire office in the “basically-alert” stage. The poor intruder hasn’t the foggiest idea of what hit him.

You must understand, I did not seek this Chairmanship (by the way, I refuse to use the silly term “Chairpersonship.” I am a man — deal with it!). I didn’t traverse the country campaigning for votes, kissing babies, and shaking thousands of outstretched hands. No, I was “to the manor, born,” if you will. But it wasn’t into a preeminent dynasty of English scholars which graced my birth. My parents were not tweeded, upper-class diction snobs who quoted Chaucer, Voltaire, and Kierkegaard, and scowled through their collective pince-nez at the solecisms, dangling participles, and verbal faux pas of the rank and file. Both had earned professional diplomas from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and during my childhood worked as graphic artists for a variety of industries. When I was in fifth grade they decided to go back to college and earn “real” degrees, so from that point to the end of my high school education, one of my parents was in school while the other worked.

My father’s major was in Industrial Arts. After earning his Bachelor’s Degree, he taught junior-high school wood shop and later became Head of the Albuquerque High School Vocational department. It was while he was pursuing his Master’s Degree that an interviewer for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Apprentice School program in Bremerton, Washington (through Olympic College), offered him a job as an English teacher. He was hired because his Industrial Arts background gave him the ability to communicate with the apprentices in the language of their trades (44 in all), such as welding, pipe fitting, and carpentry. English was something his employers figured he could learn to teach, and learn he did! While in college I dreaded writing home because he graded my letters (diagramming the sentences) and sent them back. He became famous for a technique he used to break his students of various high crimes and misdemeanors in speaking the English language. Each student was required to deliver prepared speeches before the class, while my father sat at a desk in the back row. He had a handful of dried navy beans and an empty coffee can. For each utterance of “uh,” my father threw a bean into the can. A typical delivery might begin, “My speech today uh (clank!) uh (clank!) is about uh (clank!)….” I wonder if any of the students ever got to the end. I do know that a burly pipe fitter was once reduced to tears by this inhumane treatment. Years later, when former students would see my father in town, they would yell, “Hey look! It’s Professor Bean Can!”

As with Bill Gates, who was not born into money, my father created his own wealth in his lifetime, and by that I mean the richness of his personal relationship with the English language. He is Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. The point of this digression is to show how by my father’s influence I was led to this position of pinnacallity. It was preordained, inevitable. From my perch I look down upon the rabble of verbal misuse with my pince-nez perspective and have a field day tearing apart the speech of my underlings. An employee asked me, “Did we not get the new shipment today?” to which I replied, “Yes” (meaning, “Yes, we did not get the new shipment today”). He walked away with a puzzled look on his face, not knowing what he had asked or what had been answered. Which basically gets me back to the word “basically.”

When asked where he was from, a celebrity on a television talk show responded, “Well, basically I was born in Chicago.” A traffic reporter on the radio once said that the freeway was “jammed basically from the downtown area.” A local weather man announced that “tomorrow the weather will look worse than it will basically appear.” In a story on CBS News about the procedure for the (then) upcoming Clinton impeachment, it was said that “The Senate will start by basically taking attendance.” In her commentaries on budget cuts on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” a reporter used “basically” no less than six times. There was no reason for her to say the word even once. It was mere filler. It added nothing to what she was saying. I got to the point where I was not hearing the substance of what she was reporting, but only focusing on the next occurrence of that dastardly word. It became for me a form of Chinese water torture. [By the way, I wonder if the Chinese have a word for “basically.” I know Hispanics do. Listening to a Mexican radio station the other day I heard “... esta semana el Presidente basicamente hablaba con la gente ....”]

If we eliminated “Well,” “basically,” “uh,” “like,” “I mean,” and “you know” from the English language, half of the population would be rendered mute — quite an attractive proposition, I might add. And those who could still speak would have only half of their vocabulary left. But then, NPR and others would have to find more material to fill all that empty air space left in their programming.

© 2001 Stuart Vail

The Fountain Pen

A fountain pen can make the act of writing an experience to look forward to. The feeling of a smooth nib flowing across a white writing surface far surpasses the cold, disconnected force of pressing a ballpoint into paper. There once was a time when a good pen was a prized possession. Handwriting was an art, as we can see by the documents of America’s founding fathers. Back then, people had more time. Good penmanship (penpersonship?) needs a more leisurely pace than what our world today seems to offer. The executive scrawl speaks haste. There’s barely time to sign one’s name. Zip, zap, next?

I found myself losing the ability to write legibly after years of printing with a BIC. I could no longer sign my name. My signature was an embarrassing mess. Since I couldn’t even read my own name, I felt I was losing my identity. Who was I? Psychoanalysis didn’t help. Neither did self-help books. And forget running in the woods beating a drum with Robert Bly.

All I had to do was throw away every ballpoint in the house and invest in a quality fountain pen. I bought a bottle of India ink, practiced signing my long-lost signature, and felt ready to take on the world. But I found that there are built-in obstacles everywhere. The need to “press firmly, you are making three copies” completely precludes the use of a fountain pen. I can no longer sign for packages delivered by the Postal Service. My credit cards are now useless without my John Hancock in triplicate. I can’t even write a check unless I repeat the information on the carbonless duplicate underneath. I give up!

Will the fountain pen become the “dodo bird” of the twenty-first century, going the way of the book, the handwritten Christmas card, doing math problems in your head, and the walk to Grandma’s house? Will it one day be found only in museums as an artifact from our backward civilization of yore?

I firmly believe that in this age of the television in front of the computerized exercycle, microwaved instant meals, and children raised in daycare, we would do well to keep alive the ability to communicate in legible handwriting by the continued use of the fountain pen, its indigo life-blood spilling our emotions and creative thoughts onto paper so that others may learn of what we oftentimes cannot say, and thus reciprocate. Then, and perhaps only then, we will have a chance to breathe life back into our dying humanity, and postpone our ultimate suffocation from a deluge of unfeeling, carbonless (“press firmly, you are making three copies”) communications.

© 2002 Stuart Vail

Financing the Future

The friday after Thanksgiving in the United States is historically the biggest shopping day of the year, and 2003 was no exception. At Walmart alone, shoppers spent $1.5 billion on that weekend—a staggering sum, even by Pentagon standards. I would bet that the lion’s share of those purchases went on credit cards. I would also put money on the fact that most of those items, bought at not-to-be-undersold prices, will end up costing said consumers far more than sticker price by the time many months—if not years—of finance charges factor into the mix. Does “financing the future for a quick fix today” sound familiar?

The faster money moves, the healthier the economy. Revenue from sales and income taxes helps the government, and profits benefit the producers, sellers, and employees. However, it takes the release of money to move it from the consumer to the constantly revolving system of manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, vendors, and advertisers,—all of whom must render a certain amount unto their local, and not-so-local, Caesar.

The key word is “release.” That means “out of your pocket.” That means deducting an amount from your bank account, your net worth. Or most likely, in the case of zero net worth, it means deducting a greater amount from your future. Buy now, pay later. That’s what most of those Walmart shoppers did on that glutinous weekend last November. But the reality of “later” rarely enters into the decision to hand a stranger standing behind a cash register the power to extend your indebtedness far into the future with 46.75 square centimeters of plastic. What ever happened to saving for something you want?

People used to “put something aside for a rainy day,” have a fund for an emergency, or simply stash a few bucks in a cookie jar for someone’s next birthday present. No longer. We use the plastic. I don’t know many people who even have a savings account. And what happened to saying, “No, I can’t afford it this month”—or at all?

This country used to be proud of its “made in America” ethic, but that’s all gone now. We want the jobs but we also want the cheap goods. We don’t care where that computer, car, or shirt came from. On that Thanksgiving weekend, one woman was seriously trampled in the melee to pour dollars by the bucket load into the coffers of other countries and into corporations with offshore addresses. We aggressively patronize an entity such as Walmart, driven by our zeal to save a buck, yet we bemoan the reduction of our wages, benefits, jobs, and civil services. We wonder why the local hardware store closed down, or why our schools are so underfunded. We curse the ubiquitous pothole that we never fail to hit. But hey, Joe Consumer just scored a PC for $500-and-change, whose parts were made of inferior materials in a nameless land by peasants working for a bowl of rice.

The Bush tax cuts were to stimulate the economy, and that they did for a short blip on the economic radar screen. America experienced a quick sugar rush at Walmart, but is now suffering a financial insulin crash. By spending that “free” $200 or so, our Joe Consumer bought a few more video games, or six-packs of beer, or maybe even a night on the town with the wife. Chances are J.C. spent more than the windfall, so he is not better off than before, he is worse. He either has less in his bank account or is in greater debt. And the tax cuts will bankrupt the future of his children, for the money will not be there. In fiscal year 2000 the U.S. had a federal budget surplus of $230 billion, the largest in history, and we now face the potential of a $7.5 trillion deficit by the time this Administration is finished with us.

Let’s stop the madness, or at least slow it down. We, the People, have the ultimate power. We can bring corporations to their knees by simply curbing our spending spree. The only reason they are so huge is that they have our money. Do we really need that latest Nintendo game, the new-model car, or eight more pairs of shoes? Would that money serve us better in a savings account, acting as a cushion for the next time we are really wanting? We still need to spend to maintain a thriving economy, but let’s stop trampling our future out of existence by being a bit more responsible in our decisions to relinquish our hard-earned cash. In the same way America embraces and supports obesity by increasing the stock of MacDonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Jack-in-the-Box, we also wildly and enthusiastically promote our own indentured slavery with our signatures on the credit slips that we sign almost every day of our in-arrears existence.

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The small print: the author wishes to admit that he drives a Japanese car, reads the poetry of Borges in Spanish, enjoys wines of many countries, and has a strong penchant for foreign films. He has never set foot in Walmart.

© 2004 Stuart Vail

The Point

Into everyone’s life come significant messages that mostly go unheeded. Either we are not in tune with the events or greater forces around us or we choose to dismiss such signals as unimportant: mere coincidences, flukes, accidents. Sometimes a special channel opens up that allows one to tap into a current of energy, an insight — call it what you will — which creates a new awareness never before experienced. These signals may not even be experienced on a conscious level — in fact, most often they are recorded in the subconscious. Since most of us operate unconsciously, these messages cannot be heard. Those currents are always there, all around us, accessible 24 hours a day, yet most of us are deaf and blind to them. In “discovering” electricity, Benjamin Franklin merely perceived what was there all the time. He acknowledged its existence, translated it into somewhat understandable terms, and the rest of the world took it from there.

The following is an account of a personal experience of heightened awareness. These events took place on two separate days a decade apart, but are so intrinsically intertwined that they resulted in the most profound experience of my life.

My mother has always been an avid collector of stones of all shapes, colors, and sizes. In 1988 she and my father were beachcombing at Point No Point, across Puget Sound from Seattle, Washington. She found an unusual broken stone about three inches long, that looked as though it had been cut off at a slight angle with a knife, exposing a dark, reddish-brown color inside. To her it looked like a piece of liverwurst, and she wittily displayed the stone at home on a cutting board with a knife. I had always admired it as a humorous objet d’art and would casually look for something similar each time I would visit rocky beaches in different parts of the world.

In August of 1998 my wife and I went to Washington State to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. This year also marked my mother’s 70th birthday, and it had been 30 years since they moved there from New Mexico. I thought that this time held great significance because of all the round numbers, each twenty years apart. With my sister and her young daughter, we planned an anniversary brunch at a delightful bed-and-breakfast called the Manor Farm Inn, located in a beautiful valley on the Kitsap peninsula. We would end the day with a visit to Point No Point.

When we arrived at the Inn, a woman was in the process of training a sheep dog in a large field. With the skillful use of a special whistle she signaled the dog to divide the flock of sheep, move one group to a corner of the field, and then have the dog herd the other sheep to join the rest. We knew that the Manor Farm was for sale and were sad that all of this might someday end. We also fantasized about the prospect of buying it ourselves. After the meal we asked for a tour of the property, which further enhanced the fantasy. We saw the barn, the stables, the animals, and the trout pond. We knew it was a stretch of the imagination, but hmmm . . . if we could possibly pool our resources . . . .

It was hard to tear ourselves away from that beautiful setting, but we had more to do that day. Even though I had lived in the Northwest for three years and returned many times to visit since, I had never been to Point No Point, so it was significant for me to finally visit it on this day. On the way to the beach we passed a llama farm. We turned around and parked on the side of the road so my niece could admire the animals. After about twenty minutes we continued on our way north.

My father had turned on the van’s emergency flashers while parked, but now was unable to turn them off, so we stopped for about ten minutes at a gas station for help. When we finally arrived at Point No Point, we thought we were lucky to find a shady place to park; but it turned out to be for overnight campers only, and we were asked by the caretaker to move. I remember feeling a little frustrated at all the delays because I was anxious to get to the beach and didn’t want to lose any more of the afternoon. After a friendly discussion between my father and the caretaker, we found another spot and then proceeded to walk to the shore.

The sandy beach turns to stones at the point about halfway from low to high tide, and is just the kind of place for rock collectors such as us. We all began to spread out as each of us got absorbed in different aspects of the seaside. I focused on finding perfectly round white stones for my mother, of which there were many. I was walking exactly at the water’s edge, with the incoming tide slowly inching its way higher up the beach. I then spotted what looked like a similar liverwurst-style rock and thought, “Oh good, now I have one of my own.” It would be fun to display it as my mother did hers, on a cutting board with a knife. I put it in my pocket and continued on. When I caught up with my mother I showed her my stone. She was amused with my find.

On the way back home we decided to stop at a bookstore to look for a book on bird illustration that we had been trying to find for my mother. As is our style, we all went our separate ways browsing the bookshelves, and eventually I caught up with my wife in the art section. She showed me two books by the naturalist artist Andy Goldsworthy, who uses reassembled broken stones in ingenious ways. We spent quite a long time looking through his books. My wife then went to get my mother so she could introduce her to Goldsworthy’s artwork.

After more browsing we finally got back in the van and drove to my parents’ home. I unpacked my beach treasures and showed my “liverwurst” stone again to my mother. She went to get hers from the living room so that we could compare the stones, and when we put the two side-by-side we suddenly realized that they were two halves of the same stone!

It seemed impossible, but the coloring of each was identical, all the markings around the outside matched, and the two broken sides fit together perfectly. I had found the other half of a stone my mother had picked up on a beach ten years earlier. We all screamed in disbelief. For a moment my wife thought we were fooling around by pulling an “Andy Goldsworthy” on her. We were completely stunned! We felt the hair rising on our necks as we began to realize just what had happened. I still get chills thinking about it. The chances of a friend of my mother’s finding the other half are infinitesimal, but her own son! Not a single soul I tell can believe the story.

In the ten years that separated the two finds, any number of factors could have made this reunion impossible: a storm could have rolled the stone below low tide level; someone could have picked it up and thrown it out into the water; whatever force that had originally broken the stone could have smashed the other half into tiny shards. Had we not dawdled at the Manor Farm, or stopped to see the llamas, or had the problem with the emergency flashers and parking the van, we would have arrived much earlier at the beach. The tide would have been lower and I may have walked a different path in my quest for stones. I could have missed the stone altogether.

Something had separated me from the others on the beach that day, allowing me to follow an inner focus and find the other half of a stone my mother had found years before. Subconsciously I had heeded an inner message. The stone had been there all the time, waiting for me to tune-in to it. Had I walked that same beach five years ago, treaded that same spot, perhaps I would have been blind to the stone. The time would not have been right. A friend of mine said that the gods were screaming at me that day. My wife, who has always encouraged me to “make a date” with myself, now asks me, “Do you get the Point!?”

For the past decade I have been working on a novel about alchemy. In the medieval quest the alchemist sought the Philosopher’s Stone, a substance which would turn lead into gold. It was believed that the Philosopher’s Stone is all around us, but invisible to the foolish, the unlearned. The alchemist also believed that the lead first must “die” before it can be reborn into a new form. It took me a decade of bitter experiences, including a terrible divorce from a previous marriage, a period of estrangement from my son, dissatisfaction with my job, and financial crises, to come to this place in my life—this new awareness. I had to suffer an “alchemical death” before experiencing the rebirth of a new life, the one I’m leading now. In the stone I have found my gold. I get the point. By implementing the gold in my life I follow my bliss and create and live a life I truly love.

After relating the event to some friends a few days later I was asked, “If you had a wish, what would you want to do with your life?” I’m sure I surprised them by not choosing something in music, which is my profession. I said that I would like to start by finishing my novel. A newer significance of my find at Point No Point suddenly hit all of us because the title of my book is “The Book of the Stone.”

The original half, found by the author’s mother.

Ten years later, the other half—found by the author.

The two halves together again.

Do you get the Point?

© 2001 Stuart Vail

Instant Gratification

I grew up with a fairly good idea of the value of money. It didn’t grow on trees — that much I knew, or if it did, certainly not on my parents’ trees. I had an allowance for which I performed many chores: cutting the lawn, watering the yard, cleaning my room, washing dishes, and sometimes ironing my own shirts and pants. Working was not foreign to me. Having a paper route, doing other peoples’ yards, and selling Christmas cards door-to-door earned me money to buy records, a bicycle, a basketball, and a Heath Kit radio. For the most part, if I wanted it, I had to earn it. And earn it I did.

The work ethic instilled in me by my parents helped to develop a healthy perspective of things financial, things earned. I wasn’t the type to try to shake their tree, hoping that maybe a dollar or two did linger in the branches. In the case of my basketball, I saw it in a catalog, ordered the Christmas cards I would have to sell to earn it, waited for the cards to arrive, sold the cards door-to-door in my neighborhood, sent the money back to the company, and awaited the arrival of my hard-earned prize. That involved 100% my participation. An invaluable part of the process of earning anything is the anticipation of attaining one’s goal. I didn’t think of the ball, snap my fingers, and instantaneously have it in my hands. The anticipation in every step of the way, consciously living each moment of purpose, made the basketball’s eventual arrival all the more meaningful.

The only time I can remember really complaining about not having something was in my junior year of high school. I was carless, with no prospect in sight. The cost of such was beyond my teenage capabilities, and I was inconsolable because most of my friends had cars. By then I had a job working in a music store every day after school and on weekends, and had already saved for and purchased a new set of drums, but in no way could I possibly earn enough for a car. Finally, after hearing just so much of my moaning and complaining, my father showed me the title to a 1962 English Ford Anglia. I remember being completely confused because our family used to own just such a vehicle when I was younger. My father explained that what I held in my hand was the title to my first car. He was the Head of the Albuquerque High School Vocational Department and had arranged for the auto shop, as a class project, to rebuild an old car from the ground up, and when it was in running order my folks were going to present it to me as a gift. I was floored, speechless. I didn’t know what to say. My father had spilled the beans only to finally shut me up. It was perhaps one of the most profound experiences of humility in my life. After all the crabbing I had done I felt about two feet tall.

Years later I was at my friend Stan’s graphic design studio when a woman and her four-year-old child came in with a job. While the woman was talking to Stan about the specifications of the project, her son kept nagging her for a treat. She repeatedly told him that he would get one when they got back to the car. He became more belligerent as time went on, to the point where he was jumping, trampoline-style, on Stan’s black leather couch screaming at the top of his lungs, “I want a treat, I want a treat!” His overtures were so deafening that work in the entire suite of offices came to a standstill. The poor woman had to finally apologize and leave with her little tornado screaming all the way to the car. Poorer still was Stan, who eventually emerged from his office ashen-faced, eyes bulging, and catatonic. When he was finally able to speak he instructed his staff to lock the door and turn off the lights if they ever saw her return.

The woman obviously had never taught her child the virtue of patience. The boy was a classic case of one who expects and demands instant gratification. He was used to having his every wish immediately granted. It was evident who wore the pants in that family. There could not possibly have been any regard on the parents’ part for instilling in the child a very crucial building block of character development, and unfortunately it remains absent in too much of today’s generation.

In raising my son, who is now in his twenties, I do not recall ever seeing an example of any of his friends having had to work for something, much less develop a savings plan toward the purchase of a desired item. The parents usually bought the child the toy, the video game, or the movie-on-tape. In most cases it was purchased either the day of the request or the next. Those children were not made to be financially responsible for any part of the purchase, and, as a result, the true value of the item lost all significance. If something is so easily attained, then how can it be of any value? Some kids of today want a free ride: they’re reluctant to apply for college student loans because they don’t want to be saddled with debt upon graduation. (My generation did it, and we survived somehow.) They expect their parents to foot the entire bill. How valuable will their education truly be to them in the long run?

Some toy stores now issue scan guns to little shoppers who can walk through the aisles and “point ’n’ shoot” each item they wish to add to their birthday or Christmas list. Aunts, uncles, and grandparents around the country can consult the “registry” and then buy something the child wants without duplication. A mother who was interviewed about this new feature was thrilled that finally her son would not be disappointed at Christmas either by getting something he didn’t want or by not getting the toys he did want. Where has the element of surprise gone? When our children know ahead of time what they will receive, why bother to wrap the gifts? And how dare we risk disappointing them by not giving them everything they ask for!

We can’t really blame our kids entirely for this sad state of affairs. They are merely emulating their elders with their “I want it now” attitude, possessing the same false sense of need. Credit cards, mail-order catalogs, telemarketing, home shopping channels, and on-line services have fueled the sense of immediacy by which it is possible to order something at five-o’clock in the evening and have it on one’s doorstep by breakfast the next morning. I did just that in the purchase of a new scanner. From the time I placed the order to my first full-color scan, the earth had barely completed two-thirds of a turn. It seemed as close to immediate materialization as it could be. I want it — POOF! — I have it. Because we can obtain something so quickly we feel that we also need that something — whatever it is. Effort of any kind has been removed. We no longer have to wrestle with our conscience whether or not we should purchase a product because the credit card in our pocket — which only postpones the inevitable — and the overnight delivery services make it too easy to justify our amassing material things, items that the process, by its very nature, persuades us we need.

I heard of a father trying to convince his little son that he couldn’t afford a certain toy. The boy asked to see his father’s wallet. Upon seeing no cash the boy suggested writing a check. The father said that even though there was some money in the bank, there wasn’t enough for the toy and the bills he had to pay. The boy then told him to use the ATM because he always saw Mommy get all the cash she needed from that machine. Aside from the ridiculous situation of allowing the little one to even question his father’s “No” and submit to an examination of the wallet (another case of who’s really wearing the pants in the family), there had been no education whatsoever in the basics of money. That father is forever doomed to financial servitude to the son. I can just imagine Junior’s future lawyers demanding to see Senior’s tax forms to determine ability to pay for whatever Junior wants. Similarly, in a letter to Ann Landers, a young man complained that as he had reached the age of eighteen, his father’s child-support payments had terminated, as per divorce decree. Financing his college education was very tough on his poor mother, and he felt that Congress should pass a law dictating that fathers continue to pay until their children graduate from college. Ann Landers asked if the boy had ever heard of getting a job.

In spite of their wonderful availability of instant cash, ATM’s are actually the devil in disguise. They provide us with the means to satisfy our immediate cravings without stopping to consider the ramifications of such an expenditure. No longer do we take pause to consider if we can really afford to buy X, Y, and Z. We also no longer plan a purchase by putting aside fifty dollars per month until next September, a buffer that could also allow us to change our minds over time and realize that maybe X, Y, and Z were not that important after all. If we can’t control our own styles of spending, we shouldn’t be surprised when our children think of ATM’s and credit cards as the answer.

Gone are the days of earning the build-your-own Heath Kit radio. Not only will an aunt, uncle, or grandparent buy the item for the child, it will already be assembled and painted. No muss, no fuss. If it breaks, so what? There are always plenty more where it came from. And if not, one can always jump up and down on someone’s black leather couch and scream, “I want it, I want it!”

©2002 Stuart Vail

The Power of Silence

What did you not say yesterday? Were there things you wish you had said but held back? Did you corral certain words, certain sentences, and hold them for another opportunity? Were some thoughts pushed below the surface, allowed to be changed with time, perhaps to be forgotten forever? How many “I love you’s” went unsaid that would have healed an aching heart? As with sleep, you cannot store them and build a reserve to tap into at a later date. Their power, their balming effect, quickly dissipates with disuse. They work only in the moment that they were intended. Left idle, their potential is gone, the object of their delivery untouched by kindness, by tenderness.

“I love you.” It is so simple to say. Three words. There are many other opportunities to say them, but none more important and possessing more potential than now. Words can have the opposite effect if left unsaid, almost as if they were spoken as opposites. Silence can equal the opposite. “I love you” unsaid can become “I don’t love you” out loud. Your most tender and endearing thoughts, if not allowed to fly free from the prison of your mind, may silently tell someone that you don’t care. How many times has your silence told your partner or child that you didn’t love them? How often has an unsaid word created the opposite effect? Think of all the lives that would have been changed had armies of sentences been allowed to roam free. Those who go through life cloaked in spoken endearments, wrapped and comforted in the voiced love of others, are truly blessed. The power of the spoken word is mighty. The power of silence can be mightier still.

Countless millions of words have been written and spoken since the beginning of human history. A total of all the words in all the libraries of the world, past and present, and every word of every conversation, idle chatter, lecture, broadcast, and speech in history would be dwarfed by the vast legions of words left unsaid, those rendered impotent by silence. Not that it is a good thing to instantly speak every thought that comes to mind: chaos would ensue. We have to be selective of our words and deliver them into the pattern of conversation where appropriate; however, it is our mental editing that isolates certain words and thoughts as unspeakable, and sentences them to die (pun intended).

Words can change the world. They can incite, torture, kill, comfort, heal, encourage, humiliate, anger, inspire, sadden, give joy, make one laugh, and they can forever change one’s life. There are many kinds of words: “In other words,” four-letter-words, words that are read, words to make you blue; there is the spoken word, the written word, the forgotten word; we put words in someone’s mouth, and we don’t have the words to express…. Words, words, everywhere, and not a thought to speak. And the unsaid words—oh, how they could have changed the course of history! Would they have altered the destructive lives of John Wilkes Booth, Adolph Hitler, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jeffrey Daumer, or the Son of Sam? Would the unspoken “I love you’s” have given them a new lease on life had those three words been bestowed upon them?

The power of words and their silent cousins: “What did you say?” “Nothing.” Think of the consequences had that “nothing” actually been, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I apologize and want to make it up to you.” Instead, a relationship was probably hurt forever, or even eventually terminated. “Ouch, that hurts,” if left unsaid, can become one of many familiar wedges in a marriage, or any relationship. Not expressed, it can fester inside, becoming worse and much larger over time than it originally was. It also will accumulate other unsaid “ouches,” and grow to become a very powerful “I hate your guts.” It can eat at one’s insides if not voiced. Actually, its release will help the relationship; its incarceration will destroy.

Don’t withhold. Let the hostages go. Release the words while they still hold their meaning. Release them before they change in silence. The loneliest place in the world, more desolate and forbidding than the blackest cell of any prison, is a silent marriage/partnership. All the city lights from Manhattan to Bangkok could probably be powered by the turbulent energy of the silent, but unrelenting, dialogues churning in the minds of an unhappy couple. And it would be possible, as well, to freeze solid the oceans of the world by the dynamics between the two.

Allow your thoughts to be heard. You are the most powerful person on earth. You alone possess the ability to change your world, make friends, and influence people. You have the key. Use your words for good. They can help you. Don’t withhold them, for in their muted state they can turn on you. Life is a fine balance of releasing the right words in the right order at the right time, and deciding which words are truly better left unsaid.

© 2001 Stuart Vail

Reflections of Truth

It was 9:00 a.m. The bay was at high tide, and very calm—almost glassy. I was at a little guest cottage across Puget Sound from Seattle. With my elbows resting on the railing of the deck, I was enjoying the peacefulness of the bay with a morning cup of coffee. Suddenly, out of the North, a flock of geese noisily flew right past me. They were only about a foot above the water, and their reflections in the nearly-perfect mirror below made it seem as if there were twice as many geese. As they roared by I immediately focused on those reflections, whose wings were beating in counterpoint to the real wings above. Then they were gone.

It happened so fast. In a split second I had chosen to experience the flock from its reflection. Once committed, I had to stay with it. After the squawks of the geese had faded I was left with an inverted vision of the birds: strange creatures beating their wings upward. My experience was merely a reflection of reality, an inverted and not entirely true representation of what had transpired. But that was what I knew.

We are faced daily with such distortions and constantly have to interpret what we think we saw or heard. Films based on “true facts” offer their interpretations of reality, often becoming “untrue facts.” For improved ratings the murderess is upgraded to being young, blond, and sexy, when in fact the real culprit originally might have been a frumpy, middle-aged housewife. The screen version concocts a handsome lover, fast cars, and gratuitous sex. Don’t bore the public with just the facts; remember: Ratings!

This kind of distorted perspective happens quite often. Nightly news shows—competing against at least four other stations, all showing the same reports of rape, drive-by shootings, and governmental gerrymandering (did I mention “rape”?)—will enhance their versions of events to make them more sensational, streamlined, and salable. The version of reality that is presented to the public is “brought to you by” the quest-for-ratings-influenced station manager. Had we taken the time to read a more fact-oriented newspaper instead of being entertained by the “Reader’s Digest” condensed TV version, replete with commercials, perhaps we would have a more accurate concept of what is really happening in the world.

Some people will tend to listen to others “in the know” before forming their own understanding of reality. Sometimes their opinions are based on those of the last person with whom they just spoke, only to be changed with the next. A mere glance at the tabloid headline at the market leaves us with the “knowledge” that Madonna is pregnant with an alien’s baby (further reading deep inside the issue would reveal that the “alien” was her Brit husband). Rumors take on the form of Truth. Even in the face of Truth, rumors can hold forth as the Gospel because they have settled too comfortably in the mind of their host. Parasites can be hard to dislodge.

To persuade a certain senator to vote on a particular bill, his own interests have to be served, perhaps in votes for his bill which has a hidden rider that will fund an airstrip near his house and new asphalt for his district’s county roads. Distractions everywhere. Reality is disguised by the twisted reflections that are provided to us.

We go through life making daily choices of what to believe and which versions of reality we will embrace. Sometimes the choice is the wrong one, but we don’t necessarily know that. We cling to that speeding vision, and when it is gone it is all we know. We know it as the Truth, and proceed to parrot that Truth, right or wrong, to those around us.

We need to be able to see the geese for what they are. We need to see past the distracting reflections of Truth and discern what is real and what is not. One day the water may not be glassy. There will be no reflection—clear, or even blurry—to distract us from the real thing. And when Truth comes right up to stare us in the face, we may be unable to recognize it for what it really is.

© 2001 Stuart Vail

From God’s Lips To My Ear

I got to thinking about lines the other day — straight lines, specifically. By definition, a line is straight, but as I pondered the many kinds of lines in nature, I realized that very few are truly straight. Take, for example, a route between two cities, as the crow flies. If you marked a line on a map with a ruler (see “The Tsar’s Thumb”) between Moscow and St. Petersburg, or between San Francisco and Chicago, it would be straight on the two-dimensional surface of the map, but in reality it would bend with the curvature of the earth.

A beam of light traveling at 186,000 miles per second through space would seem to be nature’s perfect example of a straight line; however, its path would be compromised by many influences, such as atmospheric disturbances, gravitational fields, and no less a force than Albert Einstein himself (he proved that a straight line in space is actually a curve). And speaking of gravity, one would think that Newton’s earth-bound apple would fulfill the conditions of our search. Had Galileo possessed the means to conduct his Newton-inspired Leaning Tower experiment from a much greater height, such as five miles, he would have seen a variation in the falling objects’ paths. The rotation of the earth around its own axis and accompanying weather systems would create a set of conditions which would affect the gravitational attempt at creating a straight line.

I realized that in nature there are only two examples I could think of that would qualify as being truly straight. One is the earth’s axis. When it comes to a spinning planet, there is zero tolerance for any deviation. The line from the north pole to the south must be straighter than an unplucked banjo string. Anything less would create an irritating wobble in our journey from A.M. to P.M., and from equinox to solstice. Certainly the earth’s axis is as straight as they come.

The other example is one that I learned from my experience as a father. Aside from the axis of a heavenly body, there is no other line straighter than the connection between a toddler’s brain and his tongue. I have never seen a more direct and immediate route than the super highway linking the conception of a child’s thought to the voiced delivery. No sooner is the mere germ of an idea formed in the young one’s gray matter than it bursts forth into the world in all its raw, uncensored, and often embarrassing glory. No editing there. For a child, no standards, rules of etiquette, or even vehement warnings can keep a good thought down. There is nothing more bare, basic, or shameless in its nakedness than an observation voiced by a three-year-old in a large company of adults. The little one will comment on anything, from the size of the boss’ nose to the funny smell that eventually gets blamed on the dog. No amount of shushing can squelch his honesty. Nothing or no one is safe, and everything and everyone is fair game.

From brain to tongue there are no side trips, no extra stops to check for propriety, no deletions. A child says it as it is. Adults will “brooch a subject,” “beat around the bush,” and “side-step the issue.” We cite examples and use allegories, paradigms, and parables to illustrate a point. We have created all sorts of devices to talk around the issues without really committing to anything. A political candidate can speak for hours without giving a clue as to which side of the fence his legs are dangling. White male politicians, on realizing they need the black vote to get elected, quickly manufacture a few new platform planks that they think will appeal to those constituents. A read of a “wet finger in the wind” determines their position that day on abortion, a school bond issue, or a presidential impeachment.

How quickly we lose the honesty of a child as we mature. In growing up we learn the tricks of the trade in the verbal arena. Honesty takes a back seat to ulterior motives and disguising our thoughts and intentions. White lies and deceptions form the plots of most sitcoms on television, and we love it. We live in a climate of excuses, irresponsibility, unaccountability, and buck passing. People cannot commit to policies, positions, relationships, or above-board courses of action.

Maybe we should obtain some absolute, concrete opinions from our truly grounded three-year-olds. Hey, Mickey! If we could only speak what is in our hearts right then and there: a straight line to the tongue. No detours to evaluate what others may think. No changing our minds mid-stream to accommodate changing attitudes and agenda. Let’s all take a lesson from our straight-arrow young folk and be a little more honest with the world and ourselves, and speak our minds for a change. The Jews have a saying, “From God’s lips to my ear.” You can’t be more direct than that — unless you are a three-year-old.

© 2002 Stuart Vail

No Pain, No Gain

Pain: that not-so-subtle messenger that reminds us that we are alive. Last night my wife was very much alive. She suffered the aftermath of a root canal, or a badly-done root canal. Either there was still more infection or the temporary crown was set too high — it doesn’t matter — pain was there in all its glory: center stage, in-your-face, rock’n’roll, screamin’ the blues, triple-A, blue ribbon, first-class pain. Now, she can handle most pain; her threshold is amazing. Last night was different, though. I couldn’t imagine enduring that kind of agony. When I have my headaches and back problems, I can’t live with myself. Either will immobilize me. I’m a wimp in the “it hurts” department.

Women, in general, have a greater tolerance for pain than men. Imagine a man going through childbirth. If it were our role to give birth, we would become extinct after the last of our generation. But is pain something that is ever-present in all of us? Do natural antibodies and immune agents numb us to the constant grinding of joints, expanding and contracting of muscles, pulling of ligaments and tendons, and rushing of blood through stretching arteries and veins? Does it actually hurt to carry around all this weight? How about having a sac of hydrochloric acid constantly churning, grinding, and chemically breaking-down food right inside of us? Or when that sac is empty, what about the pain of the acid contacting nothing but our own tissue?

Maybe, as long as our immune system is healthy, we are deadened to all the pain that is always just below the surface. A slight dip in our immuno-levels could very suddenly make us aware of a headache, a cramp, a stomach ache, or any other symptom of the biological violence that is going on all the time, just below our conscious radar. Then on top of all that we add the pain of hard labor, stress, accidents, surgery, disease, and the disuse of joints and muscles from a sedentary life. For all that, we need synthetic pain relievers to add to what is already working overtime inside of us. We gobble copious amounts of aspirin, Ibuprofin, Acetaminophen, codeine, Valium, alcohol, sleeping pills — anything to deaden the pain of our raw screaming nerves.

What is pain? What is original pain? Was it in the death of Abel? The pain of Cain lies mainly in the plain. His brother feels no pain. He crossed the ultimate threshold. Pain is for the living, the survivors. Sometimes the worst pain is fear, loss, heartbreak, being let down, disappointment, failure. But no pain, no gain. They say that in athletics. Pumping iron actually tears the muscles. Bulk is attained through those muscles healing and then being retorn again and again on a regular basis. How about in relationships? Can we really appreciate a good marriage without having experienced a failed one? Is the deeper the hurt, the greater the balm? Will having survived a decade of marital agony make the next relationship better? In my case it did. It’s not a matter of constantly comparing, but I can fully appreciate respect, courtesy, love, and having someone who truly has a concern for my personal and creative endeavors. The terrible pain of the past is now just a memory, thanks to the great healer “time” and my new marriage.

I see young kids holding hands, kissing, dating, and going through all the necessary rituals of adolescence. For them, this is it: this boyfriend or girlfriend is the one with whom they will spend the rest of their lives. This person is the embodiment of forever. What they don’t realize is that the person in their arms may be their introduction to the world of emotional pain — a first-class, front-row ticket to Hell. According to statistics, in most cases this person will either forget them, be disloyal to them, fall out-of-love with them, abuse them, beat them, emotionally destroy them, or perhaps even kill them. The high-school-sweetheart relationship that succeeds is a rare one. And that’s not to say that the ones that do succeed are pain-free. Pain is a very necessary part of the health of the relationship. The strength gained from rising above and conquering the pains of living can only reinforce the union.

No pain, no gain. Kids have to survive the agonies of heartbreak for the next relationship. Some aren’t strong enough. A schoolmate of mine blew his brains out over a failed love affair, and he was only seventeen at the time. What a cruel, painful time of life that can be: the pain of friendships, the pain of love, the pain of parents’ expectations, the pain of not being accepted, the pain of losing one’s friends when moving to a new school. In addition to the parents bearing their own scars from growing up, they suffer the pain of their children, the pain of their jobs, the pain of money problems, their own failures, lost dreams, and . . . .

Guess what? Kids, it’s all ahead of you: broken marriages, unemployment, debt, estrangement from your children, lawsuits, sickness, death — pain everywhere. That’s life. But the mountain peaks make the valleys all worthwhile: The triumph of bliss over loss. We need to expand those moments of bliss so that they outnumber and eventually cover the valleys of pain. The triumph of the human spirit is nature’s natural pain killer.

© 2002 Stuart Vail

Hummers and Cigars

It used to be that when I drove through the streets of Santa Monica or Beverly Hills, every so often I would spot the unmistakable sight of Arnold Schwarzeneggar in his brand-new Humvee. His razor-sharp jaw with cigar centrally planted and his monstrous, George Bush-sanctioned, all-terrain Desert Storm vehicle (that perfectly reflected his own gargantuan physique) cut quite an impressive 86.5-inch swath through the lesser four-wheeled products that littered the streets: the rabble from the assembly lines of Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes Benz. Even Rolls Royces, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris, who normally held court on the blacktop lanes of Hollywoodland suddenly seemed like mere gnats in the wake of the Austrian’s 3.4-ton vehicular macht. Nothing less than the mightiest herculean tank of our United States Army could raise an eyebrow of Arnold’s “Hasta la vista, Baby” countenance. Anything more would cave-in the streets of L.A.

Yes, it used to be that I could spot Arnold a mile away. It also used to be that if I avoided Arnold I would rarely encounter the stench of those foul cigars. Now-a-days those with a spare eighty-thousand dollars and the need to bolster one’s ego by sucking on what amounts to the back end of a Havana bus, thus emulating Mr. Terminator, can drive around in their own war machine and impress everyone they pass. Or do they? Whenever I see one such display I cannot help but think that there goes another idiot with a lemming mentality, another fool who has easily parted with his money. He is driving and smoking nothing more than status.

The Hummer is not a pleasant ride. Sporting such features as a 40% side-slope capacity and a central wheel inflation system, its civilian use is only good for driving down into the Grand Canyon or if one wants to commute to work through backyards, store fronts, and the La Brea Tar Pits. I can’t imagine dating in such a vehicle, either (a stiletto-healed blonde in a tight dress trying to manuever that first step is funny enough). The two front seats are separated by the immense back-half of the engine block, a design feature I’m sure the Army did not put in to discourage the driver from getting too friendly with the person reading the map.

Had Arnold influenced the world by driving a souped-up laundry truck instead of a Hummer, perhaps our concept of chic/macho modes of transportation would be entirely different. Had he smoked a pipe rather than a cigar, I’ll bet that everyone else would have followed suit. Have you ever smoked a cigar? It’s bad enough during the act; however, the next morning the mouth surely must taste as though one had licked the men’s room floor at a bikers’ bar. Imagine having to kiss a woman who is polluting the air with the essence of a smoldering manure fire, and who has decided that she is now someone just because she has a phallic, albeit soggy, cigar butt jammed in her maw.

I once saw two young couples emerge from a limousine outside of Shiatzi, Arnold’s cigar-friendly restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Each male immediately reached into his tuxedo breast pocket for what was left of a mangled, half-smoked cigar, and proceeded to light up. Equipped with their new status-symbols—not to mention their dates—they were then ready to enter the restaurant. I wondered if cigars were required, and if I arrived sans stogie would the restaurant provide me with the requisite appendage. Humans as lemmings: once Arnold was seen in public with a Cuban, the wannabees and the already-theres suddenly stampeded to jump off that same cliff.

Here we are desperately trying to fit in with the rest of the world. As a teenager, I simply had to have a pair of blue corduroy bell-bottoms, just like everyone else. Years ago, my son had to shave the sides of his head, leaving a bowl-shaped clump of hair on top. I saw a TV program about men whose cars represented to them their importance and stature as human beings. One such poor soul had a Clenet, a custom, rolled-fender job which he would park in front of a ritzy Beverly Hills restaurant, in view of everyone inside. He would tip the valet to keep the car where it was and then make his self-important entrance to sit at the bar and gloat with his drink. About every forty-five minutes there had been enough turn-over in the clientele to render him anonymous, so he would go out to his car to make a call on his mobile phone (never mind that there was a telephone right there in the bar), immediately reestablishing himself as the owner of the exquisite vehicle and elevating him once again to being someone. He would continue that procedure for the rest of the evening. During the interview he acknowledged that without the car he was a nobody; with it he felt all-powerful. He must have been related to the aspiring actor I once met who, though very poor, was saving his money to buy an expensive pair of Porsche sunglasses so that he could gain some respect at Hollywood parties. I assured him that for that kind of respect I would rather save my money and stay home.

Donald Trump and his family once had to fly first-class on a commercial airliner because his own private jet was “in the shop.” His then-wife Marla Maples reported that for the entire trip he was livid that he had to fly as a commoner with the rank-and-file. Imagine him stranded in his Bentley in the middle of the Mojave Desert: given the choice of accepting a ride to safety in an old Dodge Dart or sweating it out with his last sip of Perrier, his previous behavior would venture me to guess that Messieur Trump would choose the latter. I once saw an enormously over-weight woman wearing a skin-tight T-shirt with the name Yves Saint Laurent in huge colorful letters printed across the front. She looked ridiculous, but in her eyes the designer label “qualified” the situation. Remember the gangsta rap influence on kids wearing their underwear on the outside? How about the fast-changing lapel and tie widths, or the ever-fluctuating hem lines? If eight-inch cuffs were hip today I guarantee that they would be outmoded two weeks hence. The public stampedes the clothing boutiques, clamoring to buy the latest froo-froos from the fashion runways of Paris, only to discard them tomorrow and be spoon-fed the next new “look.” Lemmings, all.

Where do we go from here? If Arnold decides to trade-in his wheels for the new Volkswagen Beetle, used-car lots won’t be able to give Hummers away. The world awaits his next move. Imagine him realizing the dangers of smoking, and declaring a movement for a tobacco-free planet: R. J. Reynolds would fold tomorrow. We saw an example of the power of celebrity when Oprah publicly disdained beef. If Arnold had joined her cause, the cattle barons of Texas would now be overcrowding the unemployment lines. Imagine his deciding to learn Spanish: Mexico, Spain, and most of Central and South America would be the tourism capitals of the world, Los Angeles gardeners would find themselves very de rigeur, and there would be a global taste for paella, sangria, and bull fighting—not to mention speaking with a Castilian lisp.

What worries me is Mr. Schwarzeneggar appearing in public one day extolling the virtues of, say, eating stir-fried killer bees and jumping off bridges headfirst. Come to think of it, there are a couple of benefits to that scenario: idiots will quickly be removed from further contributing to the already-contaminated gene pool, and the earth would be rid of the stinging insect in a very short time.

© 2001 Stuart Vail