The Dog of Odysseus Before the Arrows

That week's vacation I mentioned in an earlier post is over as of this past Monday. It seemed to pass too quickly, until the charter trip sort of took me out to sea. And in fact. The next morning, my family boarded a Boeing 737 at 8:00 a.m. in Newark. Haven't flown with United in many decades. Landed at Bush International, Houston, and though we boarded again on Sunday at 7:44 p.m., it felt as though we had spent a week.

My nephew Michael got married to Melissa on Saturday. They had previously vacationed in New Orleans and visited a great plantation outside the city, Melissa so impressed with the estate that she researched possibilities in the Houston region. A gorgeous hall and property is the result. The music leading into the ceremony was of the highest genius. I have never before better heard Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."

We had some time as a family on Saturday. This is our second visit to family on Patricia's side in little over a year, and we took a thorough tour of the Johnson Space Center in January. As it turned out, Trish and Matt took another ride and visit of the center this time, but I had gorged myself at dinner the night before and got sick. I am under 200 pounds for the first time since 1993, not on a diet; I just don't eat as much as used to, and my job has required extreme daily exertion. I felt like taking a big exception. Woke up ill in the morning Saturday, but went along with Trish and Matt, and then decided to let them tour without me. I drove back to the Inn and picked them up later.

During several drives, I noticed creeks we passed over. As I said, it seemed as if we were away a week, but as we drove back to Bush International, it felt as if I never quite experienced Texas. I didn't feel this way in January. For one thing, it was January but 85 degrees out. For another, I took the tour. The Space Center is Texas for sure. But what piqued interest in this special respect on that tour was catching sight from the tour bus of turtles basking on a log in a slough. This time around--had I felt better--I would have liked visiting a green space I viewed on a map. Some water associated. Once Trish concluded upon Johnson Space Center, I felt relief that I had not uttered my humble preference. I never did utter it. Trish and Matt would have felt disappointment in me, and I fully understand. I don't forget those turtles on a log.

Trish had spotted a lizard near a curb when we stopped for a red light. Had we simply visited this wild place I saw designated on a map, my camera would have served use for something similar, but here's the gist. At least I myself don't get much of a feel for a faraway place by limiting my activities to venues on the same general grid pattern nationwide. The old plantation and wedding was an exception. You don't find 400-acre estates quite like it in New Jersey. I also took leave from the reception afterwards and visited a large pond in the night, a little wary of any possible night-feeding alligator. They can run a lot faster than I can, if I'm not mistaken. Not certain they exist in Texas. Or if cottonmouths do. The snakes occur to me now. And I know coral snakes do exist there. I went back inside the hall and soon invited Trish outside. She wouldn't leave the porch, but it was nice sitting in relative quiet and talking, another of the guests we knew out there with us. Ted sighted a possum over the rail and along the building. We leaned against it and delighted in watching the creature just below, unafraid of us. I asked Trish to have a look. The fur on the head such a striking pattern of black and white. She wouldn't get off her chair. To her credit, she told me she would never go camping. When she did--through Cub Scouts--she loved it. We've gone a number of times since. But she remains essentially an urbanite. There's no conflict from me about this, since I have a lot of urbanity in my biography too. We never would have dated, had I not. We plan on moving to Manhattan in about 10 years. I'm not saying we will. I can't quite believe it. But Trish researches, and she's smart as most living there. If we do, I plan to come to Jersey to fish. Often. Wouldn't mind having a boat docked on the Hudson, either.

That January I mentioned, while staying in Webster, outside of Houston--Trish's brother and his family live in Friendswood--that we watched news on TV at the Hilton Inn, as we did this past week also, same Hilton. United States Supreme Court Justice Scalea died in Texas on a hunting trip. I happened to pick up a letter from the lamp table next to the bed, a letter from my outdoor writer friend Jim Stabile. An instant before news of Scalea's death broke, I was about to begin reading. The envelope contained a printout of an article Jim had published in Field & Stream or Outdoor Life--almost certain the former. I have it in my messy study. Away from home, weeks after I received the mailing, I made a point of packing the letter along with very little else, which is just peculiar, but all my life I've exercised peculiar habits. Drove my dear father nuts. Why not have simply opened the envelope here at home and have read what was inside? Some hunch informed me to wait. And some hunch informed me to take the letter with us to Texas and read it there.

My son Matt is politically on the ball. Follows all sorts of sources. He was concerned about Altright fanatics having a rally in Charlottesville, VA, weeks before the event, which broke news when we were in Texas this past week. We watched on TV back-and-forth between Charlottesville, Virginia, and Bedminster, New Jersey.

Litton's Fishing Lines comes to you from Bedminster, also, although some posts have come from Ocracoke, NC, and one from Exmore, VA. Nationalism, which does not amount to individuals valuing particular places for their true and independent substance, especially places amounting to country (land and water), places appreciated for particular values and events within them, nationalism is left without a nation. This country we name America is, in essence, beyond human conventions--such as nationality--because country is nature independent of yet including man, but man, to apprehend nature, must do so by choice. Nationalists want fulfillment in the dream of a "nation," when fulfillment can only be realized existentially. 

I think of Ernest Hemingway in that respect. He would laugh at being called an existentialist, and if he were here with me now, I'd compliment him by remarking that he has one up on existentialist Martin Buber, because his idea of country is even better grounded than the notion of the existential. There is no nation of any substance without individuals who actually value country. People, at least in their better moments, appreciate dirt for what it is, which is not only what we are made of--all plants grow in it and we eat them, for just one example of why we are "clay." People may value dirt not only for what they are, but for what they may grow to become; these individuals I regard as realists, because the ground at the feet supports the head up top, and the heart closer to the midriff might feel that awesome rough character in an expanse of dry dirt not as a burden but as an invitation to new beginning. The human potential implies any one of us beginning with barren expanse, by binding what little the space does contain...to an idea. (There is no space without some content.) And building gradually from there. I am always reminded of Winston Churchill. He understood the need to progress gradually. In a similar way, so did 17th Century English philosopher Francis Bacon, who inaugurated the modern age of science. Modern physicist Edward Teller understood it, too.

I emphasize individuals. Nationalists who make a gruesome show of not respecting other individuals' boundaries make a display of unfit character as citizens. As an example of individual boundaries violated, a woman was killed by an Altright fanatic who drove his Charger into her during that rally. Was the sacrifice of Iphigenia right, so the Trojan War could be fought? A relative few of the victorious made it home, and more to the point: When Agamemnon made it home among them, he was promptly murdered by his wife for the killing of his own daughter.

We arrived back in Bedminster just after 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning. When I opened my study door, I met a wave of familiar odor. Dead fish. For once in three years, I have killies. (Fundulus heteroclitus, the Atlantic killiefish.) To be exact, four killies. Father's Day 2014, last I had them, while I yet worked for Affinity Federal Credit Union. Then I enjoyed weekends off, and vacation days amounting to about five weeks each year rather than one week. But the purchase on Sunday more than a week ago shows I'm still in the habit, using them in the surf for fluke, taking the remainder home, and setting any that survive in the sights of smallmouth bass while fishing the South Branch of the Raritan River. I would certainly use them in the North Branch Raritan as well, but I don't recall ever having done it, and don't particularly care to research the information in my handwritten log just now. Unfortunately, these remaining four of at least three dozen dead will surely perish before my son and I get out in my Great Canadian canoe next week. As yet, once again my aerator hums, and bubbles emit scintillating sound in my study. Nothing lost, because these fish accompanied a fulfilling possibility. More than that. These fish essentially are that possibility. Even though all will die before it could happen. Most likely. They help redeem the future, because exercising the habit makes such fishing possible yet, though I really did mean to put them to good use soon. I didn't set them free. I could have simply dumped them in the ocean when done surf fishing, but the species isn't established in the ocean, so I could have stopped the car bayside somewhere. Nope. Instead, it was a shot in the dark for my hopes of aggressive smallmouths killing them. I really didn't know they wouldn't last.

How can true affection--these four fish are beloved pets--coexist with that kind of ruthlessness? Perhaps the extremity is the whisper of a hint you can't hear. Homer's Iliad may reveal less than the work he composed in later and wiser years. The dog of Odysseus upon return home.



http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/06/adventure-in-underground-economy-when.html