To Serve Man

You comment "the service is good."  You may not necessarily enjoy the food. It's the atmosphere that draws you. Of course the famous Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" illustrates what can happen when you put too much importance on service. The manifesto turns out to be a cook book. So watch out. However, going for the food alone, is tantamount to loving someone for their money. The relationship is bound to burn out. Imagine a meteor disintegrating in the atmosphere or the huge blast of radiance that emanates from a supernova  before turning it turns into a black hole. Cosmology may seem a bridge too far if you simply are talking about Emily Post. After all, service is actually a form of gardening in which perennials, the old favorites, vie with annuals, the new kids on the block, when you're trying to build a clientele.

The Dead

James Joyce (photo: Man Ray)

As life proceeds along its merry course, with the reminder of finitude manifesting every morning as the sun rises, you may find yourself retrenching, digging your heels in more adamantly. If only you can get away with it for one more month, week or day. You're playing   three card monte with yourself, ultimately, as the deck is going to be stacked against you, when Time is the dealer. Still, you persist since it's all you know how to do. Eyes blinded by cataracts, you proceed into the lake effect snow. "The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves." --The Dead

Breakfast at the Palazzo Sangiorgio

Breakfast is served in the courtyard of the hotel. An Italian woman in a white shift talks on her phone, as she brings her plate of food from the breakfast buffet to the table. She's classically attractive and used to sashaying through existence, impervious to the world around her--or perhaps not. Perhaps this is a fantasy indulged by an impertinent observer. You never know what's in another human being's peripheral vision. The breakfast service is almost over and the tables are being cleared. Construction workers are loudly firing back at each other, the words echoing through a nearby site. Now as the alcove is finally cleared two American couples continue to talk about Sy Newhouse, Condé Nast and American publishing during the '80s.

The Crying Game

Animals recuse themselves as they prepare for death. You may reach down looking for the furry top of your dog's head which has always been such a source of comfort only to find yourself reaching and reaching until you open your eyes and realize your pet wants to be alone. It's that way with some old people. Rather than closing ranks to create their own supportive little community, they often find themselves in an isolation that's exacerbated by diminishing numbers of their cohort. With less to choose from, you often end up choosing less.

Delta One

Delta One JFK (photo: FLevy)

Some people prefer the journey. Go to an airport lounge, especially the bar. There's a self-satisfied look on  the faces of passengers en route and one that is likely to leave, once the reality of the lives awaiting them smacks them right in the face. This applies even to so called "happy people." The in between is filled with possibility while the end is just what was expected. The end of most journeys brings travelers home, a place of familiarity that's also filled with its own angst and the subliminal, that ebb and flow, hi and low tide, of life and change. How long will this last? When will it be over? How can anything be enjoyable when it will one day be over?

Read "The Great Bonac Footrace of '83" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Community

George Simmel

Small town life occasions familiarity. The sociologist George Simmel wrote about the difference between the life of the city  and that of the smaller world in The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903). Curiously it resembles the difference between the macro and micro worlds of quantum physics. The title of the Ferdinand Tonnies tome is Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Community and Society (1887), The city offers freedom at the price of anonymity. The small town provides familiarity and the sense of being acknowledged. The downside is claustrophobia.

Blocked Calls

Do you suffer from the problem that few people are interested in what you're interested in anymore, in other words the problem that you might have the appropriate syntax but lack a referent that can be picked up by many people’s devices? You know how calls get blocked?