Good times never seemed so good (Neil Diamond)

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler is sneaky. I've read quite a few of her books and while there are obvious similarities (same setting of Baltimore, same genre and area of interest - personal dynamics and family dramas), each one creates its own universe. 

I'll often approach one thinking its subject matter is going to be a bit dry, but really quickly her brilliant writing takes over, and I become fully absorbed and committed.

The latest novel to do this is Back When We Were Grownups. It centres on the choices made and not made - the different pathways we each choose and navigate. The what ifs.

Life is about choices. At any given potential deviation in the path, I have made what I think is the best choice. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. Either way, I have needed to accept the fate of that particular choice.

Often the agonising over decisions is pointless. The maple leaf will land where it lands.

Love and peace - Wozza

Living on sponge cake, watching the sun bake (Jimmy Buffett)

Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash

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The 18th of October has rolled around again - the day in 1959 when I first met my baby brother. What a great day that was!

A lot has happened in the intervening years. Things have changed.

These days, I seem to notice the changes more and more.

Various sports have evolved to the point that I don't enjoy watching them as much as I used to.

The All Blacks played the Wallabies last night and I couldn't help reflecting on what a bizarrely different game it is now.

Some random thoughts: referees (plural) now stop play for some minutes to review publicly whether something is foul play or not; meaningless play continues for ages to see if an advantage can be gained; and an array of coaches sitting in a glassed in room talk to faceless other people on walkie-talkies.

How bizarre, I wonder what Pinetree would think.

Football has also morphed into a different game along the way where ball possession is seen as a much more crucial aspect. It makes watching a game far less appealing when a team just endlessly passes the ball to each other.

Political election campaigns are very different these days, too. MMP has radically changed the way things are run and while kissing babies, the need for hair nets/ safety helmets and operating heavy machinery all still seem part of the show, everyone is also warily jockeying for position. Pretty tedious really.

It is good, therefore, to rely of yearly birthdays to roll around. Oops, you'll have to excuse me, I need to give Ross a call.

Love and peace - big brother

It needs to be said and heard: it's OK to be who you are (Hailee Steinfeld)

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I've been listening to some Dave Brubeck albums this past week ($4 bargains at The Little Red Bookshop). Of course, that activity makes me think about my dad who was a big fan of David Warren Brubeck. Incidentally, that is where I got my name from.

The influence of Graham Purdy is never far away. He was very stoic and matter-of-fact about his health. I once visited him at Maygrove and he had had a few things zapped on his face. 

He hadn't told me about them before he got treatment, instead shrugged it off as nothing, but having had similar treatment I know how those zappings work.

Even before his stroke, and aged 81, he decided not to mess around with a surgery because the whole thing would have been worse than living with it. Very practical.

The way he lived his life remains inspirational to me.

Love and peace - Wozza

I am not a number

L to R: Rover and Number Six.

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Visiting a dementia unit is a sobering experience in many ways.

Dementia is a catchall term for when the brain undergoes a progressive decline in memory, thinking, and reasoning skills. That decline changes a person's life quite profoundly. 

Certainly, life as an independent person is no longer possible. Driving, living alone, paying bills, organising food for yourself - all no longer possible.

We have a loved one - Patrick McGoohan (not his real name), in that situation. He's suffering from vascular dementia following a stroke. Patrick is an exceedingly bright man who spent a lot of his working life as an engineer working out solutions to complex problems on oil rigs and operating highly technical submersibles that checked on deep water cables. Like my brother, while doing this work his brain operated like a circuit board solving problems with logic.

I have a lot of respect for that ability because I have a very limited capacity to do that. In Robert Pirsig's great book The Art of Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance he categorises people as either Romantic or Classical. 

These are not opposites - just two types that represent two different ways of making sense of reality. It does often mean that people struggle to communicate with one another or see another's point of view.

Romantic describes people who look at the world by immediate appearance, emotional experience, feeling and then overall appearance rather than looking at the underlying rules or inner mechanics of things. This is how I see things for the most part.

Classical describes people who see the underlying form, order, and rational underlying structure of things. They look past the superficial to understand how the components fit and function together, then use logical step-by-step problem-solving to diagnose and fix mechanical issues. This describes my brother, father, and is definitely how Patrick used to operate, and still does from time to time.

That must be hard. It's difficult to know. 

Visiting the dementia unit (or 'the prison camp' as Patrick refers to it) means also seeing others in various stages of Alzheimer's Disease, vascular dementia and other types of mental change. 

It's a tough place to go for us Romantics, easier, I imagine, for the Classical types. 

Love and peace - Wozza

Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it (Charles Swindoll)

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Big thanks to the blogosphere and the interweb (primarily TheFacebook) for all the birthday wishes from hither and yon.

I had a great birthday - buying a few records* from a new record shop in Waipukurau, and enjoying a day out with Jacky.

Jade made me a scrumptious cake (mmmm banana) plus Ross and all the kids gave me a call. Love it - thanks team!

The girls won the annual Happy Birthday renditions, but Greg gets a special bonus point for the horrendous polka version.

Love and peace - Wozza

* Jacky did an eye roll when I played my new purchase of The Sound of Dinah Lee - a mint copy. She said, "How old is this????" To which I replied - "1965 - you know - when you were a baby". You guessed it - another eye roll.