The Loved Ones

I read this in a secular spirit, whatever Wendell's intentions: the permanent world is this one, but inverted.  There are other ways to take it than supernaturally. As Emerson said: "there is no other world." As Annie Dillard said: "we spend eternity here, most of it tucked under." Yet my dear departed are indeed a living presence, ever more-so as time goes by. I hope to be one myself, when the time comes.  In the meantime, I will strive to be ever less absent, as  I begin to inhabit what Richard Ford calls the Permanent Period...

Get up

"You can get up. William James reminds us of the real difficulty of that first step…But… your mind will follow your body…" —Megan Craig & Ed Casey, Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion (Columbia University Press, 2025)

https://bsky.app/profile/wjsociety.bsky.social/post/3m5tdpwj6o22t

 

Percy Warner Park

11.16.25

Repetition and the aging brain

"The more predictable your days become, the faster your neurons quiet down."*

True, but only up to a point. Complete unpredictability is chaos. What the brain needs most is novelty of thought, perspective, insight… not an absence of stable habits. Our days are inevitably predictable, mostly,  in outer form. But they can be constantly improvised and experienced anew from the inside. 

Take my dogwalks, for instance. The pooches and I vary our routes daily, but inevitably traverse familiar ground. Yet no two dogwalks feel exactly the same. It's the old Heraclitus observation: you can't step into the same river twice. Time marches on, as do we. Subjectivity makes the difference. Our repetitive circles can expand their orbits, as inner experience expands and grows. That's how you "break the loop." (See Emerson's essay Circles.)

That's how I do, anyway. As for the dogs? They never seen bored. They never meet a squirrel, for instance, or another dog's backside, that doesn't fascinate them. They never seem old in spirit. (See Mark Rowland's The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us About Living A Good Life.)

*

Confidence

I've got into the habit, in recent months— years, really— of confiding more pre-dawn reflections to my private Moleskine journal  than to Up@dawn. But this entry, for some reason, feels like one to share:

Yesterday in class was one of those days when the conversations—on consciousness, the importance of habit, the experience of grief, the acknowledgment of mortality— reminded me why I teach, and why my work matters… to me, at least.

I am so grateful that, unlike so many, I don't have to get up each day and go to a job making or selling widgets (or their moral equivalent) and peddling absurdities. I should be quite confident, before I retire, that I'm going to find a way to keep filling my days with meaningful activity. 

WE need to be confident we're doing everything in our power to avoid joining the unhappy ranks of Americans— 7 in 10, by one accounting— who say, shockingly, that they expect to age ungracefully and unhappily in their 70s and beyond. ("49% of adults ages 65 and older say they are aging extremely or very well": let's stick with them.)

"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be…"

Chronic weather

Santayana was right: far better to enjoy each season in turn...

Wed!

Younger Daughter’s wedding was picture-perfect, with wonderful weather after a stormy day and before a cold one. My reception toast channeled “my philosophical muse” on the art of knowing what to overlook. Hope they’ll never overlook the glory of love for a “fellow bird”…

[image or embed]

— Phil Oliver (@osopher.bsky.social) November 9, 2025 at 7:24 AM

https://bsky.app/profile/osopher.bsky.social/post/3m577en6w5c2f

And then there's the glory of a daughter's gratitude. Just before the ceremony began, she had gifts for Mom and me. Mine was a watch, far more valuable to me than any mere Rolex could ever be. Perfect symbol of the best of times, that seem at once so recent and so remote. So special.

 

She always will be that "impish, playful, high-energy kid" I toasted, and in my mind's eye was always going to be. They both were, and both will. I'll be forever grateful for the truly priceless opportunity I had to be the daily companion of small children, from '95 thru the early '00s. Best job in the world, and so much more.

What a weekend!

"Happy happy"

The big day we've been waiting for, Younger Daughter's wedding, is upon us. My usually-eloquent dad, when he first greeted me on our big day in May '93, was reduced to one (doubled) word: "Happy happy!" And that really sums it up.

I've been granted the happy privilege of participating in the ceremony. I'll read the passage in Wallace Stegner's The Spectator Bird that guests at Sharon's and my wedding received, as a token to commemorate the occasion, on a small scroll. 

“The truest vision of life I know is that bird… that flutters from the dark into a lighted hall, and after a while flutters out again into the dark… It is something--it can be everything--to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below; a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can't handle."
–Wallace Stegner, Spectator Bird

And then at the reception I'll deliver a toast, with a humble bit of advice gleaned from (of course) William James's "Reasoning" chapter of Principles of Psychology. "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." 

Happily married couples learn this. 

Be wise and be happy, kids. Live long and prosper. 🎵Give a little, take a little... 🎵 

Amor Vincit Omnia. 

Back to Brown's

 On May 29, 1993 I hosted a gathering at Brown's Diner in Nashville for the groomsmen in my wedding party. Sharon and I married the next afternoon.

Today I get to host a gathering at Brown's Diner for Younger Daughter's groom. Their wedding's tomorrow.

Temper fugit. 

Life is good.

Make America Great Gatsby Again

I've always been inspired by Fitzgerald's "green light" at the end of the dock, but it looks different at Mar-a-Lago.

"Yesterday I wrote that President Donald J. Trump’s celebration of his new marble bathroom in the White House was so tone deaf at a time when federal employees are working without pay, furloughed workers are taking out bank loans to pay their bills, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are at risk, that it seemed likely to make the history books as a symbol of this administration.

But that image got overtaken just hours later by pictures from a Great Gatsby–themed party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago last night hours before SNAP benefits ended. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby skewered the immoral and meaningless lives of the very wealthy during the Jazz Age who spent their time throwing extravagant parties and laying waste to the lives of the people around them.

Although two federal judges yesterday found that the administration’s refusal to use reserves Congress provided to fund SNAP in an emergency was likely illegal and one ordered the government to use that money, the administration did not immediately do as the judge ordered.

Trump posted on social media that “[o]ur Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP,” so he has “instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.” Blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, Trump added that “even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out.” His post provided the phone number for Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s office, telling people: “If you use SNAP benefits, call the Senate Democrats, and tell them to reopen the Government, NOW!”

“They were careless people,” Fitzgerald wrote, “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”"
...

HCR
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-1-2025?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=20533&post_id=177771625&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=35ogp&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email