I sometimes get interested in the question of why people are interested in what interests them (say that three times fast). Earlier in the week, there were several news items that got people’s attention in my office. Some people focused on the lousy start that the Yankees were off to. Others were interested in the Papal Conclave in Rome. And then there were the ladies in the secretarial pool. They were meeting in little groups and gravely discussing the report of a huge wave that almost took down a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Hmmm, I started wondering why that concerned them so much. Here’s what I came up with after some pondering: cruises are basically designed for and marketed to married middle-age women in pink-collar jobs; i.e., women whose marriages are way past the stage of romantic idealism, and who generally don’t have demanding professional careers to divert their attention.

The responsibilities of holding a job and raising kids and owning a house (and maybe also taking care of aging parents) will surely trample the sweet visions of happiness that were present at the start of most marriages. This applies to both men and women; but for whatever reason, pink-collar women seem to miss the youthful notions of romantic destiny to a greater extent. A two-week cruise is a temporary cure for that, a synthetic bubble where the romantic illusions can be rekindled for a week or two. The pressing responsibilities of life are put on hold. In every direction, things are made to seem new and entertaining. There are warm sea breezes, starry skies at night, fresh flowers in every corner, fine food, entertainment, nice people, and port cities to discover (and shop in). You get the feeling that it’s safe to be in love again with your grumpy old husband (or your frumpy old wife). They don’t call it the love boat for nothing.

So, with that in mind, it starts to make sense why our female clerical staff was so upset by the storm report. How could mother nature be so callused as to threaten a cruise ship, a vessel full of middle-aged couples (much like them and their hubbies) trying to re-kindle the notions of togetherness? How could a killer wave hit the love boat? What has gone wrong with the universe?

I’m having some fun at the expense of my female office-mates here . . . but only up to a point. I’m also a bit of a romantic and an idealist, although in a slightly different sense. I’d also like to believe in “love”, although perhaps in a less sensually-oriented fashion than what passes on cruise ships. I’ve had a lot of huge waves hit my own idealism over the years, so I can sympathize when someone else’s dreams get battered. Yea, ladies . . . . . it’s a tough, stormy world, ain’t it.

MAGNOLIA MUCK: Spring has definitely sprung here in the northeast. Birds are singing, and trees and flowers are blooming everywhere. So what’s not to like? Well, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about magnolia trees. They’re very pretty and they smell nice when in bloom, but their petals drop quickly and form a brown muck on the sidewalk. It serves as a reminder not to get too caught up in the seductive joy of April and May. Magnolia muck testifies to the fact that autumn isn’t all that far away. All bodily objects are subject to decay, without exception. To paraphrase the Christian ritual for Ash Wednesday, “remember that you are muck, and to muck you shall return.”

Well, just a quick reality fix. Now get back out there and enjoy the birds and the flowers and the rhythms of life. While ye may.

This week, a stray beluga whale came up the Delaware River as far as Trenton, NJ. Belugas generally live up in the North Atlantic around Newfoundland, so this one was really out of its territory. New Jersey sent out some wildlife specialists to check the whale out. They determinded that it was a old male loner who was taking a journey and maybe took a wrong turn, or just got hungry and figured that river fish was better than nothing. For now, the whale seems healthy, so the State is gonna leave it alone. But they wonder if it’s gonna hold up OK in non-salty river water (I wouldn’t call it “fresh water”; this is New Jersey, after all).

I can sympathize with that whale. That’s the way that life sometimes goes. You take a journey, look for interesting new horizons, and sometimes you find your true home. But sometimes you wind up on your own, far from a friendly and supportive environment.

I hope the beluga eventually finds what he is looking for and what he needs (salty water with plenty of oxygen and plenty of fish, nice temperatures, other whales like him, no boats to cut him up — he already has a propeller scar on his back). New Jersey is a tough environment for non-aggressive creatures like whales. And for non-aggressive people, too.

FOLLOW UP — HAPPY ENDING (we think): Helis the beluga went south the other day, and they think he made it OK back to the ocean, where he belongs. So maybe NJ wasn’t so bad on him. He probably got his fill of shad and herring and decided to move on. New Jersey officials did a good job in keeping anyone from messing with him. All right, sometimes you can do OK in Jersey; so long as you know when to get out.

TRUE RED AND BLUE, AFTER ALL? Since the November election, there have been a bunch of deep-think articles in various papers and magazines saying that the whole Red State / Blue State cultural divide really doesn’t exist, and the national political trends of the past 20 years or so are not a function of differing ideologies. I would guess that most of those articles have been written by Blue state people and have appeared in publications sited in Blue states. It’s a Blue State process: put forth an idea about a cultural divide within the nation, then try to criticize and debunk it. Blue state people value unity and togetherness, so they will obviously revolt against their own perceptions of disunity. That’s just what they do.

I too value the notion of community, but to be honest, I think that the blue versus red state thing is not just an illusion. There was an interesting affirmation of this in an article in the May, 2005 Atlantic Monthly (a blue state magazine that has already published a number of “no real divide” articles). A Frenchman named Bernard-Henri Levy took a trip across America in the Alexis de Tocqueville tradition and wrote about it (“In the Footsteps of Tocqueville”, the article is called). Recall that Tocuqeville toured America in the early 1800s and wrote a famous book with his reflections on American politics and culture. Mr. Levy, as a modern Tocqueville, seems to agree that there is something going on out in Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, Arkansas and the like. In the coastal cities, where the Democrats can still win elections, it was hard for Mr. Levy to get anyone to say why they consider themselves a Democrat. But in the red states, people had a whole lot of reasons for being Republicans. And the reasons sound awfully familiar: religion, anti-elitism, family values. Mr. Levy seems to think that the heartland is indeed voting against its economic interests and in favor of an ideology based on “the way we like it out here”.

Yea, I thought so. There is a real need for discussion and interaction across the political / cultural / geographic divide here in America. The folk out in Indiana and Oklahoma need to see that gay marriage isn’t the end of the world, and the folk in New York and California need to think about how things play in Peoria. Whoops, blue state there (if only because of the Chicago area). OK, then how things play in Pocatello and Petersburg and Plano. Mr. Levy points out that Europe has suffered the effects of passionate ideology more than once over its long history, while the U.S. really hasn’t (other than perhaps the Civil War). He ends the article on a note of irony: a votre sante, i.e. good luck in dealing with it all, hope you do better than we did, although I rather doubt it . . . . .

I need a break to get my thoughts together.   Time for a picture break.   I’m not exactly sure just where this picture was taken.   I think it was somewhere in Pennsylvania, circa 1985.   Other than that, not too much I can say.   As the song by Jackson Browne goes, “it’s just another town along the road”.

Time for a Random Roman Catholic thought: I recently had a thought or two about the Roman Catholic Church and its marriage annulment process. Actually, it wasn’t much of a thought, mostly just a memory. I was once married, many years ago. And me and the X were married in church by a Catholic priest (who later quit the ‘hood). Well, after things fell apart, I pretty much lost my enthusiasm for Catholicism, as I knew that the Church wasn’t very nice to those who might need a second chance at the altar. Admittedly, the Church does let a whole lot of people do it (i.e., get re-married after divorce); but it forces most of them into a rather peculiar kind of confession. I know, because I was asked to make that confession.

Some years after my divorce, I got involved with another Catholic girl, and we explored the idea of marriage — Catholic marriage, which was the only option for her (mainly because of her family). So I talked with some priests and sent my papers in to the local Marital Tribunal, as to get my previous marriage annulled. I tried to strike a balance between being truthful about the stresses and bad breaks that we encountered (and the mistakes we made in how we saw one another), and in being charitable to my ex (by not mentioning some things about her that probably would have gotten the Tribunal’s ear, but which I felt were none of the Church’s business). In a few weeks, I got a letter back from my “advocate”, basically telling me that everything I said was irrelevant and that I’d better take a plea to “immaturity” if I wanted to get anywhere.

Yea, immaturity. That’s the Catholic Church’s main theory about why so many marriages fail here in the US of A. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what their arrested development can do. I never made that confession. There were and still are plenty of things wrong with me, but in general, immaturity is not one of them, (Sure, I’ve had my immature moments, but making a risky commitment to a difficult and complex woman was not the stuff of teenage romance novels). As you can guess, I never did get married again. But at least I kept a grain or two of my otherwise receding authenticity.

I suppose that the whole thing is a moot point by now. I just read that the Vatican is reigning in the American bishops and priests regarding marital annulment. No getting off light on a simple plea of immaturity anymore. Well, at least the Holy Fathers are giving up a bit of their “fatherhood”, by getting away from the parent-child viewpoint regarding annulment. From now on, they assume that you’re mature enough to know the rules regarding marriage. One shot and out. If it doesn’t work, then have a nice life with the Episcopaleans or Unitarians.

Or maybe with the Quakers, who I tried and didn’t stick with, but who still have a spot in my heart. Ah yes, “friends” forever.

I don’t like animated GIF’s. When you first look at one, it’s kind of cute. But by about the third or fourth cycle, it gets rather boring. After a few more cycles, I start to realize that this could go on all night and all of next month, if you let it. It’s just a robot, just a machine, with no sense of purpose behind the entertainment that it temporarily provides.

But for the heck of it, I finally decided to learn how to make one. See above. Yea, it goes on and on and on, just like any other disgusting animated GIF that you see on the Net. But then again, so do the real Earth and Sun and Moon. Sunrise, sunset ….. sunrise, sunset. We’ve got to try to find some sort of meaning amidst the meaningless of an uncontrollable cycle. The repitition hides the preciousness. You wouldn’t miss it unless it wasn’t there. So try to do the best you can with all of it, while it’s there for you . . . and you are there for it. Even though the world some days is just one big annimated GIF.