Category Archives: musings (random daily thoughts)

the foot philosophy

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Dear Diary:

I was sitting in a terminal at La Guardia Airport waiting for a flight to Buffalo. The area was hot, crowded and stuffy. People were sitting wherever they could.

I dozed off. When I opened my eyes I saw a nun sitting at a table across from me. She was looking at me.

“I do not know what path to follow,” she said.

“There are many paths,” I said. “Just choose one.”

“I don’t know why I am reading this book,” she said.

“Because it is a distraction,” I said. “And we all need distractions.”

“What should I do now?” she asked.

“Just put one foot ahead of the other,” I said.

And then my plane was called.

— Raymond Vegso, ““Metropolitan Diary: Many paths,” The New York Times, February 5, 2019

 

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I made a lifelong friend, Bill Dalzell, when I first moved to New York in my twenties.

He was a self employed printer then, living on modest means. He lived simply and was unassuming in appearance and manner.

He never cared about externals and has always dwelt, all day long, every day, in the realm of ideas. All of his ideas are his own, although he reads avidly, partakes of religion, and draws on inspiration from others, both in books and his circle of acquaintances. (He no longer lives in New York, but we keep in touch.)

He believed absolutely in the spiritual, in mysticism, and in bona fide psychics such as Edgar Cayce.

 

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As I have said, or at least implied, above, my friend Bill lived by intuition. Once, in the 1970’s, we were in Albany together. Bill was staying with friends of his living in a small town nearby. We were taking a walk together and had just started to cross a large recently completed bridge with a pedestrian walkway. Bill turned around. “I don’t feel right about it, walking over this bridge,” he said. There was no discussing the matter with, no gainsaying, him.

Bill told me once or twice about how he used intuition — or mental processes of a non-rational cast that were even more elemental — to make spur of the moment decisions when in a quandary.

Say he couldn’t decide which bus or train to take, whether to go to a museum or the cinema, whether to walk uptown or downtown. He would go wherever, instinctually, his feet took him, follow his feet.

“I call it the foot philosophy,” he said with a smile. (He has his own philosophy and will develop his own vocabulary as necessary to go along with it. He calls cats “fur people.”)

 

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I had an experience today (September 9th) that brought the foot philosophy to mind.

I was going downtown on the number 4 train. I was intending to get off at the last stop in Manhattan, South Ferry, and take some early morning photos of New York Harbor.

The subway car was pulling into the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge stop, which was three or four stops before my destination. I’ll get off here, I suddenly thought. I don’t want to go all the way downtown. I’ll get off here and walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. I exited and started walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, with the intention of walking both ways.

About ten minutes into my bridge stroll, my wife called my cell phone. She wanted me to be available for an activity she had forgotten to tell me about the night before. We hooked up in Brooklyn and took care of a task that needed to be taken care of, at that moment. We spent a pleasant and very productive morning together.

My friend Bill would call it ESP.

And be pleased.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  September 9, 2017; updated February 2019

must it always be sexual?

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Something occurred to me this morning because of an exchange of emails I had with an acquaintance the other day. It concerned the issue of sexual impropriety in the workplace.

Without going into the details of our email exchange or what the facts were (we were discussing an actual case), I was thinking to myself today about — was reminded of — a remark I once made to my former therapist. We were discussing my own experiences in the workplace.

I do not recall the discussion exactly, but I said something to my therapist like: Sometimes situations in life occur — it could be in the workplace — where there is chemistry between a man and a woman and they find that they not only like one another and get along, but find one another attractive. But a sexual relationship is not contemplated (probably because they’re both married or already “taken”).

I said to my therapist that such warm, positive feelings could enhance a professional/collegial relationship and were a positive thing. They can add zest to life, without there being a sexual imbroglio. And, incidentally, sometimes being able to convey to someone of the opposite sex that you find them to be attractive — without coming on too strong, importuning, or being impertinent — can actually be a very nice, affirmative thing which conveys a sense of appreciation, fundamentally, of life.

My therapist fully concurred.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   September 2017

 

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Addendum:

I was in a Starbucks a few weeks ago. The young woman at the counter was extremely pleasant, as well as customer focused and efficient. I told her how much I appreciated her friendly service, then added, “I can’t help saying, you have a beautiful smile.” It was not a case of me coming on to her. I am certain she will remember what I said and think of it with pleasure from time to time.

I can just hear some readers of this post saying: It was clearly INappropriate. It wasn’t.

Once, about twenty years ago, I was crossing the street on a rainy day near my workplace on Fifth Avenue, across from the New York Public Library. The wind was nearly tearing my umbrella apart. An attractive woman bypasser (also carrying an umbrella) noticed this and started to laugh. We exchanged pleasantries for a minsecond. She asked me if I was married. I said I was. “Too bad,” she said, “you’re cute.” That was it. It made me feel awfully good.

thinking “too energetically”

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I was thinking today of something I read about Charles Darwin. It was in an article about Darwin by my former therapist, Dr. Ralph Colp Jr.

Early in the course of our sessions, I told Dr. Colp that I was interested in writing. “I’ve done some writing myself,” he said.

“Some writing.” Indeed. His output was prodigious. I have recently been rereading some of his articles. They are all superb — superbly researched, crafted, and written. These include articles of his such as “Bitter Christmas: A Biographical Inquiry into the Life of Bartolomeo Vanzetti” and “Sacco’s Struggle for Sanity,” both published in The Nation. Also, “Trotsky’s Dream of Lenin” and “Why Stalin Couldn’t Stop Laughing,” published, respectively, in the journals Clio’s Psyche and The Psychohistory Review.

And, a plethora of articles on Charles Darwin, such as “ ‘Confessing a Murder’: Darwin’s First Revelations About Transmutation,” “Charles Darwin’s Dream of His Double Execution,” “Charles Darwin’s Insufferable Grief” (about the death of Darwin’s ten year old daughter Annie), and many others.

In an article of Dr. Colp’s, “Notes on Charles Darwin’s ‘Autobiography’ ,” published in the Journal of the History of Biology (1985), he writes about various aspects of Darwin’s upbringing and personal life, including his experience with and tastes in literature and music. He states:

He stated that he had lost his taste for music, but then admitted that music stimulated him to “think too energetically” about what he was working on. He was enthusiastic about certain musical compositions, and some songs.

This was a perceptive insight, I thought, both on the part of Darwin, and, vicariously, by Dr. Colp — it struck me and I retained it fixed in memory. This is something I have observed myself.

 

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The other day, while doing some writing, I listened to the fourth movement of Brahms’s first symphony. It is a piece I have loved, especially the fourth movement, ever since high school.

I thought it would psych me up. I wasn’t paying that much attention, but suddenly I felt, this music is getting on my nerves.

Annoying? Brahms? How could that be?

One has to be in the right frame of mind for any mental activity: conversation, contemplation, study, a lecture or museum exhibit, reading, listening to music. (I realize that I’m stating the obvious.)

This is very true of music. Sometimes I will put on a beloved classical piece and find that I’m not in the right mood for it. But another piece works. And so on. Often, music is just what the doctor ordered: soothing or, conversely (if this is what’s needed), stimulating, a tonic. At other times, music gets in the way of mental processes. In that case, you have to choose either to listen to it with complete focus and no other mental processes going on, or to turn it off and focus on whatever it might be you’re engaged in that requires your attention.

Would you not agree?

 

— Roger W. Smith

  September 7, 2017

the forlorn cat

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After running an errand today, I was walking home on a grungy side street and came upon a large stray cat. A big white cat.

It started mewing, dolefully, it seemed to me.

I identified with it.

Can and do animals with whom we are familiar, such as dogs, cats, and horses, have emotions similar to our own? Can they feel a sense of neglect and abandonment?

I would say yes.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  September 2, 2017

a premonition

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My wife Janet and I had a very pleasant lunch with my brother and sister-in-law in Manhattan today. They were going to a matinee performance of a Broadway play.

My wife and I walked up Fifth Avenue together and parted at the corner of 39th Street. A beautiful day. We had separate plans for the rest of the afternoon.

I kissed her goodbye and was overcome by a powerful emotion, a visceral sense like a stomach pain. I felt a pang of loss parting from her, albeit briefly.

Someday we will be parted forever, I thought.

 

 

— Roger W. Smith

August 26, 2017

 

epiphany

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Scott and Janet —

It’s almost 7:30 p.m. The library is about to close, and I’m heading uptown on Lexington Avenue to 47th Street.

It was another beautiful day. I love summer evenings.

I’ve been having a mystical experience during my short walk.

The air, the breeze, feels so nice and cool — Walt Whitman would call it delicious.

People on the sidewalk — people everywhere — seem different at this hour. There are less of them. They don’t seem to be in a hurry; the work day is over.

Whitman got a charge from being part of a pedestrian throng, from exchanging looks with passersby.

The women! They never seem to look uptight or fearful of being accosted; instead, they look contented, relaxed. There’s an openness about them. This seems to be true in general of the swell of humanity as they appear to someone like myself “jaunting” in the City.

I passed a chartered bus parked on the west side of Lexington Avenue in the mid-30’s. People were getting off with suitcases. It looked like they were returning from an excursion to the country. A woman was rolling her suitcase along the sidewalk. She looked contented and very relaxed. Living in Manhattan, you can have the best of both worlds.

There’s something special about early summer evenings. Time seems to stand still. There is such a feeling of tranquility, of peace and serenity.

It must be what the poet felt when he wrote: “God’s in His heaven— / All’s right with the world!”

 

— Roger W. Smith

   August 23, 2017

Tchaikovsky, a cappella choral pieces (Чайковский, хоровые пьесы а капелла)

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Tchaikovsky, a cappella choral pieces

 

Posted here are a cappella settings by Tchaikovsky of texts by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsiganov, Ogarev; the composer, Tchaikovsky; and others.

 

Side 1:

A Golden Cloud Stayed the Night
Words by M. Lermontov

No Cuckoo in the Damp Woods
Words by Aleksey Pleshcheyev

Morning
Words by A. Mashistov

The Nightingale
Words by P. Tchaikovsky

Neither Time nor Season
Words by N. Tsiganov

 

Side 2:

Hymn in Honor of St. Cyril and St. Methodius

Evening
Words by P. Tchaikovsky

Before Sleep Comes
Words by N. Ogarev

Why Has the Merry Voice Grown Silent?
Words by A. Pushkin

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   January 2016

Roger W. Smith, “The Importance of Memory”

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I am beginning, as I grow older, to be more aware of mortality.

I feel a compulsion to record and share things like memories that come to me all of a sudden, that often pop into my head through association when I am writing, or which occur to me when I am out walking.

This brings to mind an observation which my mother, Elinor Handy Smith, once made to me.

It was something that her father, Ralph E. Handy, said to her — that, as regards the question of immortality, maybe it’s hard to believe in it from a religious point of view, but we can say with certainty that people do live on in our memories.

In recording things about my family and friends, I am doing so, not only in the hope that it will prove of general interest, but that it will be preserved for posterity. After all, all we have left of departed ones is our memories.

If my father once made to me a comment about Beethoven or Mozart (which he did), told me he read all of War and Peace one summer (which he did), when my mother told me about her favorite novel and favorite symphony and about the books she loved as a child, I regard these as priceless memories.

It seems so often that this is true of the details, especially — that preserving memories in as much detail as we can is of great value.

Because I remember such things, because they reveal something about and are part of my personal history, I am hoping that, maybe if I write them down and share them with others — such as my children or other survivors — they will be enabled to read, learn, and remember.

And perhaps they just might enjoy it.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 2016