Pauses and Moments

Was it the prophylactic imagining (and imaging) that the subconscious devises to chase away an unwanted development?

Memory

The Lure of a Story About Rivers–and Remembrances

Joseph H Cooper on June 17, 2016

Whether artful or not so artful, any of us can “instruct,” by meaningful recollections, which we try to deliver as faithfully as memory and conscience allow–"Keepers."

Whether artful or not so artful, any of us can “instruct,” by meaningful recollections, which we try to deliver as faithfully as memory and conscience allow–"Keepers."

The self-identification phenomenon is truly transformative. There’s the lure. It’s liberating. It’s a “passport” to guises and territories he can only imagine.

Relationships

A Father Figure Reigns Benevolently (But Anxiously)

Joseph H Cooper on June 9, 2015

In “The Cider House Rules”–the page-turner of the summer of 1985–the orphanage’s medical director resigns himself to “the feelings of fatherhood."

In “The Cider House Rules”–the page-turner of the summer of 1985–the orphanage’s medical director resigns himself to “the feelings of fatherhood."

“Tarrr-nation!” was her variation on “Darrr-nation!” which was her version of “Damnation!” which was as close as she ever got to “Damn!”

Macho-preservation instincts, allied with slime-avoidance, in a high-school dissecting class. Biology is not for the faint of heart.

A father hopes to extend his life-on-Earth tenure well beyond his seventh decade. He’s already been made aware of what would curtail it, so he seeks a window into his daughter’s life in a lab—for the lab may be her life.

Resolving to be patient and less judgmental, he aspired to forbearance in the hope of realizing an abiding calm and equanimity.

But with airline snafus, mobile phone loud-mouths, leaf-blowers, demon cyclists, high-speed eighteen-wheelers, and smokers, his resolves began to dissolve.

Whose behavior modification would relieve the upset double-parked in his stomach?

He was employed in a house of cards; he was the lone survivor. But for a numbers guy, he was never sufficiently calculating. He needs job security. Pride has its prejudice.

His daughter’s unapologetic college-application essay dilated his mind. Her mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s brought on early-onset anger.

"America Hustle" has cleavage, but it also has intelligence, wit, cleverness, and soul. "The Wolf of Wall Street" has plenty of cleavage – but plenty of moral cleavage, and crassness, as well. Rather than celebrate an unrepentant scoundrel, root for a character who will do anything to be a good father to his adopted son. Oscar-nominated films depict survival.

AARP cover stories “airbrush” the realities of most seniors.

Needed, in awards season, a new set of nominees:
Out of the limelight, unheralded performers take on significant supporting roles.
Their unassuming decency is not an act. Shouldn’t their talents for decency, humility, and humanity rise to Golden Globe and Oscar celebrity, or American Idol idolatry?

Temptation rears its remunerative head. An explorer, a driller–“fracking” into HR substrata, searching for deposits of employment possibilities.

Don’t we all want to be taken seriously, even admired? Political campaigns are a form of combat and courtship; warfare and seduction: Mixed Verbal Arts cage-fighting against rivals, 24/7 “speed-dating” for voters’ heads and hearts. He hopes to find someone who has hiring authority, who’s looking for Mr. Right, and sees him as a “match.”

He wouldn’t know a canister of Sarin gas, VX nerve agent, or HD blister agent (mustard gas) from a keg of lager or a spray can of deodorant.


Will the boots-on-the-ground be attuned to his feats and his feet? and his fears?

What would he do for full-time work? Would he do anything, anything at all?
Is his resume actually retained, carefully filed, for ready retrieval? Will an opening suitable to his resume ever become open? Will his resume ever be deemed suitable for any opening? And be happily matched?
Is his age a disqualifier? His discriminations are age-appropriate.

A golfer needs a special place to lie.

His father measured golf outings in strokes and nitroglycerin pills; the fewer strokes and the fewer the pills, the better the outing.

The son was an amateur, taking over for his father (the caretaking pro), on the few remaining holes of his ailing mother’s “back nine.”

Alzheimer’s, though unforgiving, had not yet confiscated all her recall capacities. Had it?

Alzheimer’s plaques and tangles squatted in her brain. Were there still “closets” or “drawers” or “shelves” of memories that had not been ransacked and emptied?

Was there something he could have done – funded? – that would have re-booted her brain’s “flashlight”?

In the recent NFL Combine, my bench press was an isometric exercise – affirming the laws of gravity and the physics of an immovable object at rest.

In the running events, my performance was deliberate, well-considered, methodical – and quite unspeedy.

In the NFL, however, I would be a lifestyle model, for nightclubs don’t want my kind.

What kind of numbers can he put up for his kids? Job applications are “seeded” – there is a ranking of resumes. These days, for job-seekers, there are no slam-dunks; there are no uncontested shots. There are plenty of blocked shots.

Each job-application cover letter, each inquiry, feels like a fade-away jump shot – from half court, with time running out.

Favors were always much easier to provide than to have returned.

The ancient oven and the lopsided stove served as “storage lockers” for his son’s hockey pads and armour, which were neatly splayed on the oven grates; the tilting doors secured with duct tape.