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Age Inappropriate

Daily writing prompt
What could you try for the first time?
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I’ve been accused of being too reticent in new efforts. I respond that I start slow, build up, and finish big. If you are a beachgoer, you know the approaches; the plunger or the toe in first to get the feel. I am in that third camp – toe in, walk in, and gradually build towards the plunge. If you are in the personality test business, you could make a lot out of this for personality types. 

I maintain that it’s no disgrace to feel things out first. But I have little admiration for those who live vicariously or through escapism alone. The only way you’ll get to tell your grandkids interesting stories is if you do, at some point, go out and try some new things. Not to be garrulous about it, but I’ve tried lots of things. I didn’t say I was successful at all of them, but I tried them. And that’s the thing: it’s OK not to succeed in everything.

So what’s my next act, you ask? Well, the list is long, but I’ve narrowed it down to a Geriatric Elvis impersonator, a door-to-door dietary supplement salesman, or, my favorite, a personal trainer for those indecisive about what they want to do next. I’ll charge a hefty fee, come and help motivate you to do age-inappropriate activities like an attempt to sail to Europe in a giant gerbil cage ( don’t laugh, someone recently tried this). I can video record it so you can show everyone that you are further along the path to dementia than they guessed.

Kind of like doing well while doing good?

Call me!

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Money!

Remember that song from years ago by the Bare Naked Ladies – If I Had a Million Dollars? Well, I bet it started lots of people musing, “What would I do if I had a cool million?” Of course, the answer is a lot of dumb stuff because most of us have never had a lot of money and might run into issues managing it. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from articles I’ve read on lottery winners.

So doing what I do best, imagine weird shit, I started planning for a future of great wealth. Please note I mentioned planning, not plans. Plans never survive contact with reality. Planning prepares us to face what comes. So, in my planning, I begin by figuring out how to disappear. Perhaps I’ll hide in Oshgosh and pretend to be a janitor. Why? To hide from all the fifth cousins who suddenly rediscover dear cousin Louis, “Lou, I just need a couple of thou for a hot deal!”

Then I’ll become impish and require all requests for aid be submitted in handwritten triplicate, in Classical Latin ( none of that debased Church Latin, mind you!), notarized, and sent certified mail, receipt required. Of course, I won’t be home. For those who persist in seeking me out, I’ll insist that at the audience, they play the William Tell overture using axillary sound effects alone. I’ll be sitting in my rocker reading the Wall Street Journal.

Well, so much for the weird shit. Having managed a budget for an entire Federal program, albeit small, I know exactly how fast a million dollars can disappear. So, I’ve decided that a tithe system will work best: a tenth to my favorite charities – animal shelters, a tenth to immediate family members ( luckily, we are a small family), and so on. Having had friends and almost friends who were con artists, I will not be accepting proposals to multiply the money, buy rare antiquities, or invest in ancient manuscripts. Donations to my Alma Maters will be in round sums, say a hundred dollars. My wardrobe of tattered long-sleeved T-shirts, grungy dock pants, and boat shoes will be upgraded – I’ll buy some new stuff at LL Bean.

I will return to coastal Maine and become even more crusty, irritable, and irascible than I already am. Life is good.

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My Way

Daily writing prompt
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
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I’ve been told by gurus of lifestyle change that I should live in the present, not sweat the small stuff, and let go of things that don’t spark passion. I’m not sure what would be left of my unique, confused, and scattered lifestyle if I tried all those things simultaneously. I might sully the comfortable but idiosyncratic conglomerative mess I call life for someone else’s concept of how I should live.

I think it was that great lifestyle guru I knew as my Uncle Lenny, who said he belonged to the Sinatra School of Life – “I did it my way.“

Well, it’s not breaking news, but I’ve decided Frank had it right. I’ll do it my way, and if you are nearly satisfied with your own life, that’s what I advise for you, too.

And that pile of self-help books you keep getting for birthdays and Christmas? They make pretty good firestarters for the woodstove or fireplace…but come to think about it, the paper should be compostable, too. You know, come up with your way of getting rid of them!

Wasn’t there another one on not getting hung up on details?

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Fire

The first chilled nights. It’s not a conceit to fend off the chill in front of the first fire in the woodstove and sit there watching flames jump and the warmth radiate from the coals.

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Lists

Daily writing prompt
What are your top ten favorite movies?
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Lists are so 2010s. A bucket list, a list of your favorite movies, favorite actors, or favorite actresses. Can’t think of a tenth? Well, guilt trip on it a bit; don’t collect two hundred dollars and go to jail in the game of collecting weird data points.
Of course, we all have movies we love, but it’s much more like someone will start off talking about a movie, and we’ll chime in on how much I like it. For most of us it’s compulsive.

But you joined the Significant Lists Society. Your lists of favorite things started off as means of remembering your favorites and enhancing your experience with them; innocent enough. But then oversharing crept in. They became rated for snob factor. You’ll be sneered at because an Adam Sandler movie was on your list. After a while, you “curated” your list for public consumption while keeping a “guilty pleasures” list for Saturday night binge viewing. Eventually, this infected your book list, and you trolled the New Times Booklist for impressive titles.

Look, This has to stop. You photoshop your social media posts, cheat on your Instagram, and no longer know what you actually like. I’ve contacted three of your best friends, and they will do an intervention tonight. 

Please do not yield to the temptation of making a list of the ten things you most want to achieve during an intervention.

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Respite

Daily writing prompt
List 30 things that make you happy.
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As a society, we are getting too attached to itemized lists, stacks of bulleted items, and compilations with the word bucket in the title. Today I’ve used vermillion, Alizarin crimson, and cadmium yellow in my painting. I’m done if I can squeeze in some unbleached titanium oxide and ochre. I’m not joking.

We all know people who feel compelled to list or be listed. 


Happiness can’t be reduced to watching the sunset in the Rockies with your Sweety while eating Chunky Monkey ice cream, followed by a Taylor Swift concert. Those things might evoke pleasure, but happiness? I’d maintain that you’d need to be disposed toward happiness for those things to affect you positively. The wrong frame of mind, and you have exquisite torture, not exquisite happiness. Paying too much attention to lists with little checkboxes is an excellent way to mistake a masquerade for actual life.


Take a break. Take a respite from categories, lists, and checkboxes. Now… hold a deep breath, let it out slowly, and forget you can count. Just be in the moment.

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Harmony?

Daily writing prompt
What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?
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We are a bunch of selfish oafs if you ask me. Compromise, hell no. Give up something I prize; you must be kidding? So when asked what I’d yield for harmony, I balked.


Being a quibbler, I automatically asked: for whom and why? We all yield things for harmony in relationships, even if it’s only agreeing to be quieter coming home after a late night at work, not partying with the boys every evening, or stopping avoiding domestic tasks like washing dishes. I like to wash but hate to dry, so I had a major existential crisis when asked to dry and put away. I had already yielded significant ground by agreeing to fold laundry; once again, I like to wash but hate to put away dry clothes. If the heap system was OK for me as a bachelor, why is it now verboten?

Let’s face it there are limits. Harmony is fine, but what about fundamental liberties? Where in the lexicon of terms regarding harmony does it say deprivation of fundamental freedoms is a good thing?
I’m going on strike. No more dishwashing until harmony is restored!

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Enlisted

You may be familiar with the term Chain of Command. Although I’m sure that it started as a military euphemism for the order of authority in a military organization, It’s spread to civilian life. But think about it. It’s not the more appropriate “flow of authority” or “who to call when things go wrong”; no, it’s the chain.I think the whole thing is just a bit fascist. But then, when it comes to me, you’re dealing with a 1960s counter-culture survivor in deep recovery.
Yup, a chain. Jerk on the chain when something happens. Yeah, you can tell that I was a troublemaker. When I got out of the Navy, little love was lost between the two separating parties. Officers did not like some smart ass politely asking why we were doing some dumb ass thing, while procedure clearly stated to do the opposite. My last thirty days were marked by my ceremonially trimming off a knot on a “short-timers rope.” I burnt the final bit in a little ritual at the local Blue Anchor bar.
It’s true; I thought I was done with petty officiousness. Instead, I found it alive and well on the civilian side. I admit it. It was immature of me to suspect that things might be otherwise. So I just learned to tie knots in the devil’s tail without getting caught. And guess what? I eventually wound up back in the belly of the beast working for the federal government.
My teeny little appendage of the feds was located and attached to the National Park Service as part of the Department of the Interior. Nobody had any real idea of what I did or why the feds were spending money on the cultural programs I was in charge of.

For some reason, the folks in charge began to think that they should start behaving in a more polished, regimented way…kind of like the military. So it was stiff responses and everything but salutes and short-arm inspections. The funny thing was there were only three veterans in the organization, and we were amused and confounded by the pomp and circumstance the leadership put into this.Our lack of respect for these activities didn’t win us any joy. We were a former paratrooper, a tanker, and me very late of the USN. We understood that the actual military did not run continuously on protocol, inspections, and reprimands; sometimes, you had to get work done.
As a small group, we’d gather mornings for coffee, snicker over the goings-on, and recall military idiocies we’d participated in. We were sure these people’s ideas about the military came from the movies, not actual veterans. Unfortunately, if you haven’t served, you probably don’t know lots that you need to survive, much less flourish, in the military.We started an informal educational forum over coffee. We taught them parables of military thought, such as – ” problems pass up the chain of command, but the shit always drops down.” From the movies, they know the more common acronym the military was fond of, but we taught them the one that would allow them to cope and survive. It was BOHICA – “Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.”
Bohica sums up the military life for the enlisted. It advises that you duck and cover to avoid the worst or unhappily accept your fate. It outlines how frequently the nasty stuff falls on the innocent. Of course, you must also learn to tie knots in the devil’s tail.
I’ll leave you with one final anecdote. Because of my degrees, I sometimes get asked If I served as an officer. No, I was a lowly enlisted. The normal response I give is one many enlisted veterans deliver: ” No, I worked for a living.”

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Quibble

Daily writing prompt
On what subject(s) are you an authority?
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Yes, I do like to quibble. I sometimes get impatient with others who do the same, but I am a quibbler nonetheless. 

On my being an authority, I’d most certainly love to quibble. This blog is called Louis N Carreras, Woodcarver, and I suppose you could say I was an authority on carving. But I am just a bit unhappy with that; I know many with more sterling credentials, techniques, and knowledge. And while I sometimes believe in “fake it till you make it,” there are limits.

It comes down to the old quandary in a society that now lacks a guild system; who is a master? This question occurred one year while I was teaching carving up in Maine. “Lou, are you a master carver? So and so calls himself one.” Well, it happens that I don’t term myself a master. A master’s is a certification or degree a university or guild grants. Carvers have no unified granting authority ( and my university post-grad equivalents don’t count here).

But some people tack on that they are masters. Now I know several carvers I’d admit to be my masters in the craft. Indeed, my old mentor in Baltimore was a master with his many commissions, ecclesiastical carving, many modes for chasing, engraving, and so on. Funny, though, he never appended the term master. I think he thought it was superfluous.

With what I’ve just said as a preface, I’d have to say that I approach terms like master and authority with some questions. Who named you an authority, and how broad a swatch do you claim dominion over?

Being a master or an authority is a cloudy patch. How much of an authority are you? All-encompassing or narrowly defined. Do you offer carefully considered information and advice, or do you like to speak Ex-cathedra?

There is something about the ex-cathedra school that smacks of arrogance to me. And I prefer the considered information and advice school. So if forced to stop my quibbling on the issue, I’d say that I am an authority of sorts on woodcarving, but circumscribed by my ongoing learning process and the limitations of my knowledge.

Craft and art are like so many areas. They are learning processes. They can also be like elaborate jungle gyms. I remember the day I made it to the top of a particularly challenging jungle gym as a child and looked out at the entirety of the playground beneath me. My first climb up Mount Katahdin offered a similar experience but from a much greater height. Mastery needs to be considered similarly. Not done in one, but ongoing knowledge, challenges, and experiences lead to an always-growing sense of ability.

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Clancy J Bumps, ABD

It’s not a lie. My cat Clancy, AKA the Grey Menace, attended Boston University. OK, it’s true that he never matriculated, paid tuition, and never “walked” to receive a degree, but attend he did. He probably participated in more anthropology lectures than any other cat ever. And that includes vocally protesting when he felt the professor was in error.
Some of the feline parables he spoke were neither appreciated nor understood by the professors. Tony Leeds, one of my favorite professors, began to wonder why the class was tittering and giggling while he was seriously lecturing. Looking behind him, he spied Clancy Stretched out the table, carefully cleaning himself and paying no attention to what Tony said. When he noticed all eyes were on him, he carefully turned his back and resumed. My professor had some trouble refocusing our attention on fieldwork methodology.

If Clancy had a vet appointment, he’d be at lectures with me. When the landlord was fumigating the big loft building where I had my studio, Clancy also attended class. The Menace attended lectures, symposia, and even a few departmental get-togethers. He carefully investigated the menu and platters at the parties for favored tidbits. He thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The summer following my graduation at BU was spent on the coast of Maine helping my father-in-law, the Cap’n, build a small marine railroad for hauling boats. While supervising and catching small creatures in the intertidal zone was interesting, it lacked the challenge of academia. Late in August, we departed the mid-coast for the last time and took an incredible road trip south to Pennsylvania.
His interests at grad school matured, and instead of attending classes, he focused on the party scene. After my second year, we rented an apartment in a converted mansion. To be blunt, it was a party house. There was a huge backyard just perfect for late-night dance parties. Clancy took to this as if it were his native environment, strolling among the dancers, being adored by young women, and eating from the buffet. It was a feline paradise.

So you ask, what about the title? Sometime after returning to the Boston area after grad school, I sat at the typewriter composing Curriculum Vitae and resumes. Clancy sat by the typewriter; I called him my coauthor because he spent so much time with me when I wrote – frequently trying to grab the flying typewriter keys. He was also always intent on letting me know he was bored. Well, so was I; at best, I never was a great typist, and working on a multipage CV was no fun.
I ripped the current sheet out of the machine, looked at Clancy, and said, “OK, let us write your CV.” For a Felis domesticus, it turned out to be pretty impressive: attended both Boston University and a prestigious Ivy League grad school, coauthored with Louis N Carreras numerous papers delivered at national and regional anthropological society meetings, and extensive fieldwork along the coast of Maine. He is currently seeking a position commensurate with his experience.
Being a lover of the absurd, I sent the fake CV out. The only thing that tripped us was the lack of actual graduation dates. On the CV, I did imply that his post-grad status was ABD ( all but dissertation). We got one reply thanking us for applying, but the position had already been filled.

He seemed offended and peed on the letter that night. To be fair, he did this occasionally to papers I had written ( a judgment of their quality?), but I felt he took this rejection seriously. After this, he moved on to post-graduate activities and seemed to forget the halcyon days of academia, as did I.