Issue #19

An egg and other delights

Advanced Wisdom

I’m getting old, I say when I see scaly skin on my once-lovely shins. I’m getting really old, I say as I massage the increasing girth and ache of my knuckles. I’m being old is what I say when I assume a misplaced item has been stolen, when I go on the same old walk instead of trying a new one, or when I groan about changing technologies.

Thank goodness getting old and being old are not the same thing. We don’t have much choice in the former; the latter is not inevitable but takes real effort to avoid. As we age it’s discouragingly easy to narrow our world, to overfocus on limiting inconveniences, possible danger, pain. As helpful as wellness gurus like Dr. Peter Attia are, encouraging us to age healthily, their mindset can trap us in self-obsession. It’s not that far a leap from vigilantly monitoring your VO2 max to becoming fixated on the ease and frequency of bowel movements and the safety of other people’s driving. When everything hurts and death is around the corner, it’s hard to live a big life, much less to focus on the needs of other people.

As an antidote to this depressing scenario, I present Wisdom the albatross.

Wisdom is a 74-year-old Laysan Albatross who lives on Midway Atoll. Seventy-four is old for an albatross, a species that typically lives 40-60 years. In November Wisdom laid an egg, becoming the oldest known wild bird to do so. At the end of January, her chick hatched. To understand how amazing this is, not just that biologically she’s capable of reproducing, but that at her advanced age she still has the brio, the zest, the will to mother a baby, you have to know something about the albatross.

The Laysan Albatross flies from Alaska to Midway Atoll (or to Hawaii, among other remote places), struts and clucks to attract a mate and then performs an elaborate ritual to bond; lays the egg, spends two months protecting it, and once the egg is hatched, flies back to Alaska without stopping to collect food to feed it. The mating partners take turns flying back and forth, again and again, till the fledgling can care for itself a few months later.

You have to ask why. Why was Wisdom up for this grind? She’s already laid 60 eggs and raised at least 30 chicks. To reproduce yet again she had to find a new mate—she lost her lifetime partner four years ago—and take on all the effort of courtship and the worry some wild pig or feral cat will eat her offspring, not to mention that exhausting commute. Why not just rest on her laurels and nap? Presumably because she’s driven to pass on her outstanding genetic material.

But maybe there’s something else. I know I’m being ridiculously anthropomorphic, but is there, in the beating heart of Wisdom, a driving need to take care of someone other than herself? Is love part of Wisdom?

a fledgling, but not Wisdom’s

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Local Celebrities

We have lots of albatross here on the north shore of Kauai. It’s a treat, and not even that rare a one, to see them walk and fly. These are big, big birds—2 ½ feet tall with a wingspan of 6-7 feet! They walk like pot-bellied men with bad knees, but they fly—glide is a better word because they don’t flap their wings—with unmatched elegance. This mismatch between their dorky ground game and their graceful flight is one of the many things I love about them.

Another marvel is that albatross mate for life, and that both parents care for the egg and the chick. Every November the partners return to Kauai, separately, to the exact same spot they nested before. And they make the Alaska-Hawaii trip without a layover, sleeping with half their brain at a time.

But the greatest thing about the albatross is their mating ritual. It’s noisy, dramatic and not the least bit private. Here’s two videos of I took on a local golf course:

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A Long Way from Colin Firth in a Wet Shirt

If you love Jane Austen more for its social satire than romance, you’ll love @somebenfen on Instagram. One clip at a time, with his rubber-faced lip-syncing and make-shift costuming, Ben Fensome re-presents the unforgettable 1995 BBC mini-series Pride and Prejudice.

He uses shower caps, doilies and lampshades as hats, a stationary bike as a horse. He pins his t-shirt to re-create the ladies’ necklines and dons a dishtowel for an ascot. His scruffy beard, bulging eyes and large proboscis disappear as he takes on each character. And the diction of the actors from the BBC production is all the more delicate coming out of his decidedly-undelicate mouth.

(If you have never seen the mini-series, you’re in for a treat. Jennifer Ehle will always be my favorite Lizzie Bennet. Colin Firth is a convincingly arrogant Mr. Darcy, and David Bamber’s portrayal of Mr. Collins is a comedic masterpiece.)

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Could Have Used Some Cliff Notes

I just watched @somebenfen lip-sync the P&P scene where Lady Catherine de Bourgh descends on Longbourn demanding to know if Lizzie is engaged to Darcy, and I suddenly understand something that should have been obvious to me years ago. As someone who’s read Pride and Prejudice four or five times and watched multiple adaptations on screen, I’ve been thick-headed.

I’ve always accepted that in the world Austen presents, Lizzie’s family is socially inferior to Darcy’s and not just because of finances. A good half of her family is an embarrassment. Her mother is histrionic, her sisters Lydia and Kitty foolish and flirty, Mary a boor and untalented, and her cousin Mr. Collins is simpering, stupid, and self-important. Darcy’s prejudice against marrying into such a family is understandable if not admirable. But his relations are equally awful. The unbearably rude Lady Catherine, her dull, sickly daughter Anne, the dastardly Wickham, Darcy’s friends the odious Bingley gals—strip away their money and who would put up with them? They are also an embarrassment.

Surely part of the prejudice in the title is the prejudice we have towards wealth. Both the Bennett and the Darcy families are fraught with defects but the extreme wealth of the Darcys puts a gloss on its problems. I like to think I’m never impressed by money, but clearly I missed how Austen takes the Darcy family out of their palatial estate and tosses them in the monkey cage with crazy families of every class.

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It’s Delightful, it’s Delicious, It’s Already Been Done

I was googling “delight,” looking for a clever title for the new feature I mentioned last week—a reader’s column on what delights—and I discovered that the wonderful poet Ross Gay has already covered the subject. According to its Amazon description, his collection of essays The Book of Delights “celebrates ordinary delights in the world around us.” Just what I had in (my unoriginal and copycat) mind. I feel a little like my son when, after his first visit to New York City, said with a completely straight face, “You know, I feel like if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.”

His innocence was sweet. He had never heard the song before and so his thought was original to him. I actually heard “New York, New York” in a different way after that—Joe’s words underscored how the song was tapping into something that real people feel when they visit the city for the first time.

So I say, there’s room for more than one voice on delight. I hope to hear yours. As Whitman said, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else. Look for the column starting next issue.

I welcome all contributors. Email me at thepoemelf@gmail.com.

We’ll begin next week (still working on a title. . . how about “Not Ross Gay’s Book of Delights”?)