i was driving around San Diego on my way home from lunch with one of my all-time best friends Pete Toennies when i started to thinking about truth. The thought was initiated during lunch when Pete and i discussed the many sides of politics passing each other without even knowing the other guy was going the other way.

Pete and i are about as different as you can get in most ways. Pete is 6’6″ in incredible shape; he was an All-American swimmer at St. Johns, a UDT and SEAL officer, retiring as a captain. He has attained financial success through hard work in buying houses, renovating them by himself, renting them out and then doing the same again and again until he ended up with two apartment complexes, one of which he sold for a tidy sum about a dozen years ago. His financial acumen is on spot. He is a health nut, swims three nights a week, works out every day, and practices golf every day he’s not playing. He is a successful leader and what i would like to label an independently thinking conservative.

i am an enigma. i am about as short as Pete is tall. i work out occasionally and have never had much interest in finances. i golf with some weird belief i will get better through positive thinking. That ain’t happening. i am, in my niece’s terms, a putterer, and in my older daughter’s term, a contrarian.

Not only do Pete and i get along; we understand each other and like each other even more because we understand. So after our delightful lunch that we had not done in quite a while, i thought about our discussions. i thought about “truth” and tonight, i wrote this poem (sic);

truth

what is truth?
is it your truth? their truth? my truth?
is your truth better than their truth?
i already know you think your truth
is better than my truth;
after all, your truth
is based on facts;
of course, they are your facts
based on your truth,
and
their truth is based on facts;
of course, they are their facts,
and
lord knows,
you or they can’t ever, ever
consider their or your facts worth a damn
because they conflict
with your or their truths;
and
you and they aren’t ever gonna consider
talking to each other
to understand the difference
and
come up with a truthful solution;
while my truth lies in some long abandoned
cubby hole of reasoning
because
my truth doesn’t rely on facts
or
even truth;
my truth, i hope,
relies on compassion; equality/ freedom in their purest form, understanding,
and
what my folks taught me
about doing what’s right,
and
although i am not a practicing formal Christian,
i think that guy Jesus
pretty much nailed it
when he reportedly said
“do unto others as you would have them do unto you,”
and
“he who is without guilt cast the first stone;”
but
that is another truth entirely,
which most of the folks in this world
just ain’t gonna deal with,
and
i look around to watch all of those stones flying in the air
and
wonder
will we ever get to truth?
right now, i am not real hopeful.

Bonita, California
March 1, 20-17

As i did in 1979, i again have come to realize “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar’s daily entry is a lot more than funny. Its a pretty deep (oh okay: it’s deep for me) in the realm of human nature.

For example, this weekend’s entry — there is only one entry for each Saturday and Sunday. i guess Mr. Murphy has to rest sometime and the sabbath seems ideal to me — is oh so pertinent to our country’s current situation:

Hanlon’s Razor — Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Looking back on my last several posts, it seems i have become hooked on Mr. Murphy and his laws. i promise (weakly) i will back off. Mr. Murphy might sue me for copyright infringement.

i often get damn near ill when people start talking or writing about generalities when it comes to people.

It seems we keep classifying people by their race, the color of their skin, their religion, their politics, their sexual preferences and completely ignore they are individual human beings.

i guess it’s easier that way.

Then last night on PBS, which many of my conservative friends will determine this post is no longer worth continuing, ran a segment that blew me away.

The story is about a Syrian immigrant to the United States who is also a Muslim.

My thought was until all of the critics of their perceived enemies with their perceived generalizations about those enemies, foreign and domestic, right or left, black, white, brown, yellow, and green (okay, okay, i sort of went a little overboard on green), and on, and on, and on, can approach doing what this amazing gentleman is doing, they should reconsider their generalizations.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/foster-father-cares-terminally-ill-kids-no-one/

i was thinking this would be a quiet, lovely weekend.

i thought about sitting out in the yard in the morning sun and reading. i’m reading three books right now, and i need to knock out at least two of them because the third is the one i find most interesting. Over the last ten to fifteen years, my reading habits have gone into the toilet as every chance i have to read i discover some task, either a home minor emergency, a financial action, or simply writing something like this, to keep me away from books — i am old admittedly and it’s always a BOOK, not some monitor or screen. i gotta have my tactile fix when reading a “book.”

This is critical since one entire wall of my home office is a bookcase completely full of books. i once promised myself i would read all of the Harvard Classics and the Franklin Library collections that i haven’t read and then reread many others placed there because they are special to me. i figured when i retired (sic) each time (right now, the number of retirements stands at about a dozen), i would devote several hours a day to this task. Ain’t happening.

Today, it turns out, is no different from the other days when i laid aside time to read leisurely (such a nice comfortable term that “leisurely”). We are in the process of  needed maintenance on our courtyard, So there are some palm varieties that had to leave the scene. They have and the final  stump removal occurred today. That means, of course, that someone must find the drains in the planting areas, make sure they are extant, clean the surrounding area and put river rock atop them. You see, the rains again are coming to the Southwest corner in a day or so, and the planting areas will not be replanted by then. So, a rain will wash the dirt and debris down the drain; it will plug; and then we’ve got a bigger problem. So that has to be done NOW.

In an effort to do everything at once, in spite of our “a little bit at a time” plans, we also began making the front room worthy of Maureen’s art and craft show (as well as it being her office). So reflooring commenced in the middle of the week. To re-floor, we had to remove the shelves my father had installed in the closet some ten years ago. i got that removal job. Painting the closet became the priority. That painting began today and will conclude one day next week. Now, some smuck gets nailed to prep and paint the door frames and the quarter round for the baseboard.  Guess who?

In checking out the stump removal, Maureen pointed out the master bath’s exterior door needed to be prepped and repainted. i cried, but admitted that was my job long forgotten (purposely because i do not like to paint and dislike prepping for painting even more).

Oh, and did i mention income taxes? Organizing my office? Getting the stereo to work properly? Fixing the light fixture and the light switch?

So the reading in the sunny morning has already taken a hit. i had already given up going to watch the Tony Gwynn Classic at San Diego State and University of San Diego fields with this year’s teams consisting of UC Irvine’s Anteaters (man, i love that nickname), Notre Dame, Oregon, Seton Hall, the two host teams, and Tennessee. I have also conceded the afternoon to not watching Vanderbilt play Mississippi State in basketball on the tube. Of course, i taped that and will watch it later…if i get all my work done.

Then, i tore Friday’s Murphy’s Law off my desk calendar by the same name. The entry was: “Campbell’s Law — The less you do, the less can go wrong.”

i told Maureen this was my new motto, seriously thinking i might yet salvage some basketball watching and reading in the sun for the afternoon.

Maureen laughed.

i am now planning a marathon night of reading to catch up. i wonder if in my torpor of old age, i can still do that?

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher, born in Poland, February 22, 1788 (from Wednesday’s “Writer’s Almanac,” the source for much of the information on him in this post).

Had he been born today in the United States, he would be excruciated into oblivion. You see he believed “women were foolish and meant to obey.” i cannot imagine any man of even questionable intelligence at any time in history admitting he believed either.

But his other ideas have some merit from my perspective. He had this idea of two realities: one we have from our “limited senses  and reasoning,” and “the other of universe as it truly is.” This idea, which i think is on target, would also get him pilloried and burned in effigy today, along with mass protests.

It seems we should all consider where our reality lies in relationship to the universe as it really is. But that ain’t gonna happen here and now. Too many folks are going for the jugular with no attempt to consider what the reality of the universe might truly be, let alone the reality of the other side.

So i’ve written enough to join Mr. Schopenhauer in the pillory. All sides will leap to my  perceived offense against them with no regard for intent. That’s okay. i’ve gotten used to it, and such reaction makes me consider their thoughts, even changing my take on reality, which is just as not accurate as anyone’s compared to universal reality. So even though it hurts, it is a good thing for me.

In the reality of Mr. Murphy — you know: the guy who came up with “Murphy’s Law” except it wasn’t really Mr. Murphy; it was another guy with the same name — Schopenhauer was credited with one of the laws in “Murphy’s Law Desk Calendar,” damn close to being a second bible for me.

To revisit, my Uncle Pipey and Aunt Evelyn Orr sent me my first desk calendar of Murphy’s while i was spending 1979 Christmas in Hong Kong as a staff member of the Commander, Amphibious Squadron Five staff. The calendar was my Christmas gift from them for about thirty years after that. I looked forward to opening that present every Christmas and now buy it for a Christmas present to me from Santa Claus.

But that Mr. Murphy had another Schopenhauer in mind with the same name of that other Schopenhauer of Murphy’s who supposedly created “Schopenhauer’s Law of Entropy.”

That Mr. Schopenhauer’s law states:

If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel of sewage, you get sewage.
If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine, you get sewage.

i must admit, even in the universe’s reality, there is a whole lot of sewage and not very much wine flowing around this world.

But something is bothering me in my reality. It has been several years since Mr. Murphy, yeh that one, included “The Law of Thermodynamics” in his desk calendar. Perhaps this was just an oversight on Mr. Murphy’s part or mine. i fear someone somewhere in the political spectrum expressed outrage at such a concept, and that particular law was barred due to it upsetting someone whose reality is whatever hits the fan is actually evenly distributed. Of course, that it is a bit of reach for anyone’s reality, but i’ve seen further stretches of reality.

Regardless, Mr. Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics is very much a part of my reality and i miss it. So for all, including Mr. Murphy and Mr. Schopenhauer, as Mr. Durante once said, “Wherever you are,” here’s that Law of Thermodynamics:

“WHATEVER HITS THE FAN WILL NOT BE EVENLY DISTRIBUTED”

And whenever i consider the reality of that law, i know everything in my universe is sometimes grounded in reality, and i can deal with it, and smile.