On What Matters

You may not have read Laurie Colwin’s Happy All the Time. Certainly if you’re bipolar you’re likely to take such a title as a reprimand. What does it really mean to be happy? And OK but “all the time?” Come on! Colwin died young ironically but there’s been a rekindling of interest in her work which included cookbooks. Happiness has always been a question for philosophers despite the fact that Camus famously stated the only philosophical question that matters is suicide. The late Derek Parfit an Oxford consequentialist and author of books with titles like Reasons and Persons and On What Matters undoubtedly had something to say about "happiness" as would have utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham John stuart Mill and most recently Peter Singer who has dealt with this question from the utilitarian perspective. Singer is proactive in suggesting that people give up their material possessions for the good of others. That and not eating meat might be seen as his yellow brick road.

read "What is Happiness?" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

Yo Yo Yo, listen to "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang

On Being Waitlisted

Are you one of those people who’s annoyed being waitlisted at all the good cemeteries, where you get the kind of crowd you'd want to spend eternity with? Of course during the Pandemic when funeral homes were flooded and in violation of those red  "Maximum Occupancy Not to Exceed.." signs, it was understandable that you’d have to line yourself up or wait for your pager to flash when your plot was ready. But the world has gone through a sea change in a relatively short period of time. In this new era of human history, demand exceeds the supply for headstones, which are harder to find locate than an apartment in Park Slope. Of course if you're the kind of person who likes to paddle against the current and is adverse to trends you’re not going to play ball. You’ll simply head down to the local crematorium when it’s your time and then have your wife or partner toss your urn off the Brooklyn Bridge. However, if you're "dead set" on a plot, you're going to have to plot. Try Sotheby’s or another of the high end brokers. They can work wonders in satisfying your requirements when it comes to crypts, mausoleums or even a simple landscaped graves. You can die in peace, knowing there's life after death.

read "Obit." by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and once again listen to "Bang Bang" by Joe Cuba

Washington Crossing the Delaware

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Larry Rivers (1953)

There are the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Now we’re in the Cenozoic epoch which started 66 million years ago. It’s almost inconceivable that the roots of civilization as it’s known began only 5000 thousand years back, in Sumerian times--a grain of sand when you consider the Big Bang at 13.2 billion years. Of course, there was a lot to accomplish after the first Boson came into existence. It’s a long road from elementary sub atomic particles to the 46 chromosomes that humans possess in each of their cells. Another interesting figure. Australopithecus afarensis, the species to which Lucy, the famous fossil, belonged, roamed the earth 3.2 million years ago. It’s not even 300 years since Washington crossed the Delaware in 1776.

read "Is Your Self-Invention a Success" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Bang Bang" by Joe Cuba

Hard Driver

Have ever noticed how hard it is to retain certain kinds of information? The mnemonic centers of the brain seem to reject these the way the body does an organ transplant. If it’s an attitude like altruism you might say consciousness is pushing back simply because people are endemically selfish and self-serving. However, there are other kinds of data for which the forgetting is harder to understand. In traditional Japanese karate, Kata are the choreographed moves against an imagined opponent. These represent a mixture of beauty and aggression and can range from 16 movements up to 54 (Koryugojushiho) and beyond. If you don’t constantly practice Koryugojushiho, you will forget it. Language itself can similarly resist retention if not always used. Undoubtedly, you've met those who spoke perfect French after their junior year abroad but then complained they'd forgot everything by the time they returned to France as adults. Looking through your retrospectroscope, you may conclude this “momentary” form of memory is the purest and most spiritual, since it reinforces the notion of living in the now.

read "Is Your Self-Invention a Success? by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "What's Love Got To Do With It" by Tina Turner

Hamlet by Joe Schmo

 

Hamlet is by Shakespeare, but it can be by anyone. The name isn’t copyrighted nor are the emotions. Gonsharov’s Oblamov is Hamlet as is obviously Heinrich Muller’s Hamletmachine. BTW Tolstoy once told Chekhov he was almost as bad as Shakespeare. To Be or Not To Be by Ernst Lubitsch (1942) is a madcap comedy with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny about a production of Hamlet going on in Nazi occupied Warsaw. In this version Hamlet is more about the actors than the play, an interesting take since the play within the play,The Murder of Gonzago is also essentially an in your face Hamlet. It wouldn’t be surprising if Hamlet didn’t raise his mug in the For Dummies series, but what would a Hamlet kit comprise? First of all you need a guy who's traumatized by some kind of knowledge of which he’s only partially aware. In the actual play Hamlet sees a ghost, but is also the ghost since his father’s name is Hamlet too. You need a love interest, one that can be created by a pre-Raphaelite artist like Millais. And you need a Fortinbras to arrive. With only these three characters you could have a nice chamber play or on the other hand if you were Cecille B. Demille you might imagine Hamlet with a cast of thousands, where Elsinore is like Times Square and 42^nd on New Year’s Eve as the ball is about to drop.

read "Hamlet of A Stop At Willoughby" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Barbara" (1960) by The Temptations

also listen to "What's Love Got to Do With It" by Tina Turner

Is Grief Contagious?

What is the relationship of feelings of inferiority and insecurity to grief? You grieve loss but not a failure to attain something which is still in the realm of possibility. The problem is that it leads to the no man’s land of pure misery for which there's little or no catharsis. On the other hand, can grief itself lead to feelings of inferiority and insecurity? You’d think that the aggrieved individual, the mourner commands a certain degree of respect and even admiration—when they show an ability to push on in spite of everything. But death is frightening to many people who often look at solitude as a disease. You may at first commiserate with the cancer victim, but then you go through a secondary stage where, in order to protect yourself (from the fear it could happen to you), you begin to blame the sufferer. If they’d avoided diet sodas, cigarettes, booze, they might not have been hit with this or that scourge. On globally, you look at the grief stricken mourner as being infected with a highly contagious disease, known as life, from which you seek to be spared.

read "The Findings" by Francis Levy, Evergreen Review

and listen to "Bernadette" by The Four Tops

Are Humankind and Nature Bipolar?

Iskandar and the Talking Tree

Nature can be the enemy as has been evident from the biblical flooding and drought which have accompanied global warming. There are Cassandras who believe the earth is actually off its rocker. On the other hand even confronting severe elements, you may find yourself experiencing the delusion you're one with nature. The notion of cosmic indifference is anathema if you’re in the throes of this kind of exhilaration. It’s a sweet dream that belies the fact that humankind may inhabit nature while at the same time essentially having little in common with it. Homo sapiens are characterized by will and consciousness. There have been those who believe that trees are sentient. Hope springs eternal! But not only do nature and humans seem to be in conflict much of the time, they're literally bipolar opposites.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Let Me Be the One" by Expose