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Bay Rum

Scent is a very personal thing; to some, the right scent is a melody of pleasure. But others are effectual nightmares that do the opposite of inviting close contact. When combined with a person’s body chemistry, it’s hard to tell what a particular scent will do, result in fascination or act as a repellant. Personally, I’ve had a long relationship with the scent of Bay Rum.
Bay Rum is a uniquely Caribean originating scent that has traveled widely over the centuries. Its origin story, which may be true, is that it was a concoction made of leaves from the Caribbean Bay tree ( not the bay leaves you cook with) mixed with rum. The mixture was a combination of insect repellant and cologne and was invented by the buccaneers and pirates of the Caribbean islands.

It was the principal aftershave used by my father, a marine engineer, when I was growing up. It was also the preferred method in the house of disinfecting any cut or bruise. Pour enough of the stuff my dad used on, and after the screaming was over, nothing was going to find an anchorage for infection.

At some point, my father moved on to Old Spice, and it was my first aftershave as well. But eventually, we both drifted back to the old standby.

So, it can be hard to buy presents for me, but someone figured out that the gift of Bay Rum was always welcome. As a result, I have Bay Rum shaving soap, body wash, and bath soap. I also have enough bottled Bay Rum aftershave to flirt with the scent in its many forms consecutively for well over a week. That’s without repeating a specific conjuration of ingredients, and it is incredible how so many recipes can be called Bay Rum and smell subtly different.

Scent is a very personal thing. For me, Bay Rum encapsulates a lot of family history while allowing me to vary my scent subtly daily. Not for me, those flowery concoctions sold in the cosmetics department for women to buy for hubby. Nope, it’s old school: Buccaneers, pirates, the Caribbean, and adventure. Arrrr!

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Crystal

Listening to Lucrezia, you’d learn that her family was a long line of scryers and clairvoyants. Not mere Tarot readers or palmists. Now, this was a long time before Salem became flooded with occult shops offering incantations, cantrips, and paraphernalia. Lucrezia told you right out front that her methods were the surviving remnant of the lore that had been available to her great-great-grandmother. Of course, not everything got passed down, but enough remained that her vision of the future could be 20/20.
“No, the problem is seeing the past accurately. Where you have stepped in your life determines the path that you choose. The future is tethered to your past. We are not free agents floating in the breeze. Your life is inscribed on neurons, not determined by the aether. Our past is our future unless we take dramatic action or have it taken for us.”
Taking her crystal out of the velvet bag, she began her readings of my girlfriend and me. Every few minutes, she’d ask intelligent questions of us regarding our lives. Then, finally, she read our futures in the form that was more advice and counsel than forecast.

After the reading was over, my girlfriend, very interested in the occult, asked Lucrezia how she had prepared for her career, which books she had read, and preferred methods. Lucrezia stopped her and said: ” Dear, first you need to understand that I had the lineage in my family for this. My mother and grandmother trained me. Then there was my double major in anthropology and psychology, with some theatre arts courses at Boston University. So you can’t just read some screed and gaze into a crystal!”

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Committee

” Blame it on, Caine. It’s nobody’s fault, but we need somebody to blame.” So goes a line in one of my favorite songs. Let it be a cautionary tale to all – it’s human nature to go hunting for someone to scorch, roast, and generally ruin when things head south.
This need to make someone “pay” is the reason why modern society loves doing things by committee; too many targets. Have a big enough committee, and while they all scurry about after the brown stuff hits the fan, the hypnotic effect of that many ant’s scurrying distracts you from your righteous revenge.

How do I know so much about this? Well, having worked for multiple federal, state, and municipal agencies, as well as large corporations, I have done my time as a scurrying ant.

The problem with keeping your head down in a committee is that if everyone does that all the time, it becomes too easy to live with mediocrity. The best committees I’ve worked on had leadership. And leadership willing to take the blow of criticism if things don’t universally please. Let’s face it, nothing universally pleases.

Our world is too complex for many issues to be solved by just a small group of big thinkers. Climate change is not going to get solved in one capital. Instead, solutions will come from large groups of stakeholders – committees.

But here is the bottom line. Either it gets done, or the critics will be voicing unhappiness with final breaths.

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Bamboozle

Bamboozle was not one of John’s favorite words. He found it repugnant and lacking in any vestige of craft. And craft, strange as it may seem, was what John’s clever schemes and cons were all about.
If you asked him who among the fathers of modern con he most respected, he’d answer with no hesitation, Charles Ponzi. Ponzi let new breath and an entirely new approach into the old games. Ponzi was one of the visionary lights of Wall Street; any young man interested in arbitrage, International reply coupons, or such could spend their time wisely looking at the trail he had blazed.

John moved to New York to be near the action. We understand that he was instrumental in creating the new fiscal devices derivatives that were so instrumental in the last large financial crash. Unfortunately, I guess he hasn’t worked all the bugs out yet.

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If and But

If I had the money, I’d probably taken the bus. But as usual, I didn’t have the money, so I traveled by thumb.
If I had the choice to make all over again, I’d make a better choice; now. But I didn’t then, and now I’m digging out again.
If and but. The two most critical words in the English Language.

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Childlike

Where does loving your inner child end and being puerile begin? My wife might say the border is somewhere around my sense of humor, which ranges from the ludicrous to the obscene to the grisly. The grisly part derives from working in surgery for years. There wasn’t much that we wouldn’t or couldn’t discuss at the lunch table. But for the most part, only family get to watch the antics; I keep everything mostly tucked away for the polite company.
I think the genuinely puerile belongs to those whose humor has more than an edge of satire; it edges into the cruel. Shortcomings are exposed, magnified, and exploited for cheap yucks at the expense of someone.
Individuals who behave this way seem to have a certain tone-deafness to the hurtful effects of their humor. It’s that cruel streak that leaves me cold and paints the border in a bright color. It’s not just a puerile prank or taste-defying joke. The aim is to wound.

At one time or the other, we all may have had a friend who met this low standard for behavior. I think the first one I knew was a close friend until I became the target. Then, one evening, after he ran through other marks, he turned on me. After that, it wasn’t so funny anymore. I think that self-esteem issues are at the core of bad behavior. If you don’t feel good about yourself, you look for attention, pointing out the shortcomings of others – real or imaginary.
My wife and I abandoned a friendship with a couple we truly liked because of that particular cruel streak. Finally, there came an evening where requests to stop got ignored. So we went home early and never socialized with them again.

These individuals can’t distinguish between the childlike and the childish. There is enormous resistance on the part of an individual who behaves this way to change. It’s like an addiction in that the problem has to be acknowledged before it can be resolved. And, as people who have struggled with addiction know, this is very hard.

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Wake Up!

If you’ve read my work for a while, you know that I’m a prose person. I’ll read poetry, but other than a lousy haiku, I don’t write it. A while ago, I ran into the poem I am presenting below. Sad to say, It epitomizes a lot of the hype of being a sailor. I want to assure my readers that I am scandalized by it, and this was not me when I was young…or older. None the less I am presenting it here as a sort of ethnographic curiosity, a counter to the more abstemious images of a sailor’s life.

                          A Sailors Prayer

            Whether I wake in Thailand 

                or Norfolk or Guam,

or wake up in Subic with half my stuff gone.

Or wake up in a hot tub, butt-naked and drunk,

  Lord, Let me find my way back to my bunk.

The author is one Bill Watts, who my suspicions lead me to think was either a deck ape or snipe. So I hurry to implore the readership that I never partook in such scandalous activities.

But I know how vital that bunk is. Even in a crowded berthing compartment, it can be as close to an owned private, secure space as a sailor can have.

I haven’t been able to find anything out about Bill Watts or this poem. If you know anything, please let me know. The man’s been there! I, of course, state this hypothetically.

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Stories?

Before I tell you this story, I’d like you to promise not to turn me into the anthropology police. You see, it’s not research. It’s not “canon,” and I might get sanctioned for telling stories out of school ( so to speak). You know the sort of thing; sentenced to reading five terrible textbooks five times until I recant my heresy and promising to avoid creating a fissure in the discipline.
Thanks!

Years ago, when I started studying Saints festivals, I asked a resident of the community I was working in to explain the relationship between the people in the community and the saints. During our conversation, he told me a story that he said came from southern Italy. There was a community that had a very close relationship with the patron saint of the community.
Faithfully every year at the Saint’s festival, the members of the men’s and women’s societies processed around the community carrying the saints praying, making offerings to support the upkeep of the festival and the chapel, and asking the Saint to intercede on their behalf.
A lovely chapel housed the Saint. And the community members were careful to attend to the needs of the Saint and the chapel.
The community was located very near a volcano that had been inactive for many centuries. But one day, the town was awoken to the rumblings and sound of a volcanic eruption in the making. For days the earth quaked, and domestic animals ran away or acted scared. Then, at last, the mountain began erupting. The lava flowed towards the town. Despairing any but divine help, the community members went to the chapel and brought the Saint out. They then marched towards the lava carrying the Saint at the head of the procession.
Nearing the eruption, they began praying to their Saint to intercede with God on their behalf. The eruption seemed to get worse. Again they implored the Saint, but the lava appeared to flow ever closer. A third time, they begged the Saint with no result. Finally, they picked the Saint up. The leader of the Saint’s society walked around in front and looked up at the Saint. “Saint Lazaretto, the people of this town, have believed in you and taken care of you for many years. We need your help now. Help us or into the lava you go.” It was clear that the Saint had bungled things.
The people carrying the Saint’s image raised it to pitch the statue into the lava flow. Once, Twice and then three times, they raised the Saint up into the air. Finally, the third time, the lava started to recede. It was noted afterward that the Saint who had one hand raised in a two-finger benediction had three fingers raised in blessing.
The grateful community carried the Saint back to his chapel, where he is revered to this day.

I had heard a matching story told regarding a saint in a small community in Spain. The person who told me the story was an anthropologist. Supposedly the events had happened far away from where he was doing fieldwork. But he had heard it from a reliable person who had lived in the town.

In the Spanish story, all the essential details matched the Italian one, including pitching the Saint and reminding the Saint of his duty to the community.

It can be hard or impossible to tease out the history of these things. They are like sea stories in this regard: there is usually a kernel of truth, surrounded by elaboration. They get reported as having been relayed to the teller of the story by an impeccable source. As a lover of sea stories, who am I to question the credibility of these tales? But as I said, please don’t report me. It’s not peer-reviewed for publication, and I hate teaching Introduction to Anthropology to 19-year-olds.

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Skillful

Mostly I do not take chances with safety while carving, so the gouge took off a hunk of the eyeball on the eagle I was carving rather than a hunk of hand. I could have let out a bloodcurdling yell as the tool slipped. But I was doing a demonstration, so I took a deep breath, turned to the observers, and calmly said, ” So what do you do when an accident happens, and you have to fix it. Say that starting over is not an option?” Holding up the severed piece of wood, I showed it around as several viewers opined how they would fix the accident. It was a dirty trick, but it allowed me to think about how I intended to correct my error.

You hope this sort of thing never happens, at a demonstration or anytime on an important commission. But, it always seems to happen when you are tired, emotionally bothered, or otherwise distracted. In this case, I fixed the error with a bit of clever recarving that looked better than the original. But I also ran through the ever-faithful methods of glues, screws, and pins.
Go to a museum look carefully at work on display. Look long enough and carefully, and you will see where the craftsman corrected, fixed, or concealed something that hadn’t ought to happen. That skill is part of what makes a capable craftsperson.

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Like a River

Creativity is a strange beast. It’s river-like in that it’s dynamic and can change channels, bringing life to one and allowing others to dry up. You are a fortunate person to have more than one viable channel.
This observation came to me when I unearthed sketches and paintings from the very late 1960s. No, they aren’t lost, DaVinci’s, and that’s OK. However, it was refreshing to see that once I could attempt to straddle two areas of art. I was very interested in perspective and depth of field, which probably influenced the complete shift to woodcarving.

Then there was the nude. I was experimenting with woodcuts, and my first wife was laughing at my portrayals of the female form. So I did a Daliesque drawing of her and made a woodcut from it. Unfortunately, the block doesn’t survive – she threw it into the fire, but one print got pressed between two empty sheets in my sketchbook. It was a rather ludicrous woodcut, which was intended. The body drapes and drips over a chair. I was a saucy and bold malapert in those days.

It was a time of discovery. I found drawings for some early sculptings. Jean Arp and Henry Moore influenced me, and I executed and sold one or two small pieces influenced by their styles. Unfortunately, I was so poor that I did not own a camera, so I have no photos of those pieces. The lumberyards were used to me scrounging for scrap to turn into carvings because I had no money. Local artists sometimes treated me like I was radioactive because I lacked any training and had no schooling. It was all just fun at that point, and for some of them, the fun may have fled as art became business.

Years ago, my oldest, then about ten, would go into the shop and pick up the curved scrap of cherry wood that came from cutting spoon, bowl, and spatula blanks. He’d grab a bucket load of those and a hot glue gun and create towers from the curved pieces over the next hour or so. I made sure only to monitor the safety aspects of his work, not what he made. He never became a woodworker, but he found his creative channels.

So creativity is a strange thing. It doesn’t like to be constrained to one channel, made to run in a conduit or become bound. We should take this as a sort of artistic Gospel. Let it flow, doodle, play—Experiment.