What Does Your Name Signify?

On May 28, 1952, my nineteen and twenty year old parents named me Stephen Allan Rowe.

 

 

 

 

But what did they then know of me today, sixty years later?  

I didn’t even know myself at eighteen or twenty-one! Now, October 2012, sitting down at age 60 to write this reflection…

 

 

 

 

 

 

... I do know, and have thus renamed myself:  Stephen Allan Armand Filiault Rowe.

 

 

What does your name signify?

 

 

 

 

  

One Christmas, circa the second grade, my stocking presented a bottle of red ink and a rubber stamp, STEPHEN ALLAN ROWE, in capitals.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Using the stamp, reading those letters, felt strange – everyone had always called me “Steve” or “Steve Rowe,” and that is who I had always told people I was.

 

 

 

Of course I knew “Stephen Allan” was theoretically correct, but “Stephen” felt stuffy and pretentious, while “Allan”felt entirely alien, and neither names were ever used.

 

 

Yet there it was, undeniable to a seven or eight year old - bold red block capital letters proclaiming STEPHEN ALLAN ROWE. I was evidently “really” someone different from whom I felt myself to be!

 

 

Finally, many years later, I am who I am: Stephen Allan Armand Filiault Rowe. So what does this name, informed by my life experience, signify?

 

·         Steve was a childhood nickname. Paraphrasing the Biblical Stephen, When I was a child, I spoke (and was spoken to) as a child. But now I am an elder. Stephen connotes the flower of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual maturity wrought throughout a lifetime. Far from perfected, still I feel I have outgrown my childhood nickname Steve; I am Stephen.

 

·         Allan still feels alien, yet paradoxically, feeling alien feels ‘right’ now. I have always heard the yonder drum, have never been in step, all along the way. I wasn’t born to lead, I wasn’t born to follow. If Allan still feels a little odd, I am used to that feeling.

 

·         Filiault is my mother’s family name, so different from the Rowes ... I had always loved  the Filiaults, yet never imagined I was anything but a Rowe. Until my wife Kathy told me so around age fifty, and then it was so very obvious. The Filiaults are deeply spiritual (though not necessarily Christian), exceptionally frugal, non-conforming and non-materialistic. The Rowes … not so much. I am indeed, and have always been, a Filiault.

      

  

 

 

 

·         My Grandfather Armand Filiault was a French Canadian who ran away from a Catholic orphanage as an  adolescent, and migrated to America’s “Live Free or Die” “Granite State” of New Hampshire. He was fiercely independent, absolutely sure of himself, a stubborn, singular codger; and so am I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armand (Buster) Filiault’s old workshop; he made do.

 

 

·         So what of Rowe? It is a practicality. No one would know me as Stephen Allan Armand Filiault. And now my son and his children are named Rowe. Finally, I would never forsake my father, Basil Charles [later Charles Basil] Rowe.

Despite an ever-present, insurmountable distance between us, my last words to him were “I’ll remember the good things …”

 

 

 

 

  

And indeed there are many good things to remember.











 

 

Thus it has passed that, legal records aside, I am today Stephen Allan Armand Filiault Rowe. And I know what my name signifies.

 

 

 

 

Gloria Filiault Rowe at twenty

 

Charles Rowe at nineteen

Gloria Filiault at sixteen

  

Charles Rowe at twenty-one

 

 

 

 

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Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

 

 

Facebook: Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?

When Shakespeare wrote, some four hundred years ago, that “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” might he have somehow imagined Facebook in the throes of the 2012 elections? So many words, so little truth … So much venom, such little understanding … What confounding furies drive honest, intelligent friends, otherwise full of good will, into this blasted wasteland? Why do we mutilate each other in this Hell?

The answer is obvious, if you consider the source: almost all of these cancerous, toxic political posts seem to be “shared” content originated by partisan ideologues with self-serving agendas. But the word “shared,” in this case, is a misnomer. Sharing is generous and loving. We share personal photos, news, etc; or we share personal hopes and aspirations, often for each other; and sometimes, we even share our personal thoughts.

Most political posts, however, are not shared so much as cloned; witlessly reproduced “as is,” though often augmented with a few scathing words amplifying the cloned core. But given the biased source, something critical is almost always missing, and that is an honest, intelligent, unbiased consideration of the raw content. Were it present – this missing, unbiased analysis – then we would indeed be sharing; but in its absence, we are witless tools of self-serving, partisan ideologues.

Hence the sound and fury, signifying nothing but our own witlessness, our own idiocy.

We are, potentially, better than this, but there are costs: the effort of inquiry and the loss of certainty. Every significant political issue is complex, having not one truth and two sides, but many sides and many truths.

Truth is kaleidoscopic – it depends on how you look at things, and small shifts in perspective can generate very different conclusions. Furthermore, genuine inquiry is usually difficult at best. Lay citizens often lack the knowledge and time necessary to evaluate the complexities, while “the experts” often are, or are paid by, the self-serving, partisan ideologues responsible for our political dysfunction..


So to be honest, we must admit our uncertainty. And since honest uncertainty is better than certain idiocy, might we then, with a measure of humility, simply vote our conscience, and abandon the political sound, fury, and idiocy that have characterized Facebook for so many months?

Out beyond ideas of right and wrong doing, there is a field. I will meet you there ...

(quote by Rumi, the 13th-century Persian Muslim poet and Sufi mystic)

 

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The Beauty and Ecstasy of the Low

Insects obviously can experience terror, so why don’t you imagine they experience joy and ecstasy as well? Try harder!

You slave in factories, offices, and stores to purchase clothing, shelter, food, gasoline, and insurance, while this bee knows more joy in one day than ten of you do in a week! Yet can you begin to imagine the ecstasy of a firefly?

And what about dandelions? Surely they experience some form of botanical ecstasy as well?

This post is in some ways an addendum to “I Live in a Trailer”

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I Live in a Trailer

I live in a trailer I bought new for $26,000 in 1996, on three acres of rural land I acquired for $16,000. I have two Chevy Impalas bought new a total of 286,000 miles ago, and don’t plan to replace them for some good while yet. I have one 18” television that my wife watches, one old computer, and no cable or internet. My cell phone doesn’t send or receive text, I don’t want it to, and I certainly don’t want to surf the internet on a phone … I walk, run, or drive to the Fremont Public Library to do that for free, porting files back and forth per a cheap flash drive, leaving virus protection, software installations, operating system updates, etc to the library.

Are you getting the idea … I AM FREE!

I never eat at restaurants and don’t want to, though I do buy coffee now and then, mostly to just sit and see what the world is like these days from that window.

I don’t buy new clothes as long as my old clothes are servicable. I don’t buy electronic or other toys, though I do have a couple old radio/tape/cd players. And so on … I am free

The key is basically acceptance and detachment: I don’t buy anything I don’t need; I don’t want what I don’t have; and I have the wisdom to know the difference (between want and need).

What about “health care?” Basically, my body takes care of itself and so will yours if you let it. That is all the insurance I need. Of course I get sick, but I also get better, just as people have for years and years.

Yes, some day I will get really sick and die. We are all mortal. I accept this with grace, and LIVE FREE in the mean time.

So what that I live free? Such a stunted life style, who would want that?

I am glad you asked. As human beings, our primal, authentic nature was shaped at least thirty thousand years ago, utterly independent of the superficial trappings and artificial electronic experiences we value so much today … trinkets and beads, really. [In 1626 Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the local Indians for trinkets and beads].

Today the trade is different; most of us don’t have land to trade, so we buy our shiny modern baubles by selling our time … hours and hours and hours of unnecessary labor for nothing but trinkets and beads. It is a shame, as time is our most precious commodity.

But I am free.

I am happy. 

I am content.

All photos taken March 28, 2012 with a cheap old Kodak digital camera on the three acres surrounding my trailer.

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Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Later photos: 

   

  

  

  

Click here for an overview of my blogs

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Fountain of Wonder and Awe

Garrett’s Public Library, where I spent many formative hours as an adolescent, will be 100 years old come 2014. Looking toward that horizon, I want to publicly recognize and thank its very many employees, patrons, supporters, and “friends” over those years.

I always disliked school, but the library was a place of wonder and awe. Depending on my mood and temporal interests, I might visit shelves containing volumes on astronomy, world religions, mathematics, philosophy, sociology, literature, chess, … So many possibilities! There I would randomly scan the prefaces, introductions, tables of content, and pages of books far too many to read. Often I would check out and read a book, but the main pleasure was to fathom the extent and depth of knowledge that lay “out there.”

 I recall so clearly relishing the arcane symbols of calculus in a physics book, and the keen anticipation that someday I would understand their meaning and more. I remember a cryptic introduction to the Tao: “He who knows cannot say, he who says cannot know.” How that enigma thrilled me at age 15! Of course I didn’t understand it then, but that is precisely why it was so exciting: it presented irrefutable evidence that a universe of learning and knowledge lay beyond the dreary, suffocating classroom walls! Then there were the periodicals – all kinds of magazines on all kinds of topics. I remember reading that complex DNA-like molecules were discovered in meteorites. Should that be taken as evidence of life in outer space? I never decided; in retrospect it was the questions that were important.

No one else knew how important that library was to me. Certainly I couldn’t have articulated these feelings at that time. But today I wonder, how many others might have shared similar feelings throughout its hundred-year past? And how many more might share similar feelings throughout the hundred years to come? Again, while these answers may never be known, the questions are important. I will venture that with respect to the future, the answer will be “More than might have been, thanks to the Library’s many friends and supporters.”

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Do you think all this texting, email, and internet is making us less human somehow?

You this email think us do texting all less making human somehow internet and is?

Think do internet and email you texting all making this less us is human somehow?

You do all internet think and this us less email texting is human making somehow?

You texting all think do email this internet and human less us is making somehow?

All think texting do internet and you less this email is making human us somehow?

Do email you think all is internet texting this less human us making somehow and?

This think do you internet texting us less and all email making human somehow is?

All do this think you us texting and is less making email internet somehow human?

Do internet this email you think and all texting human less is us somehow making?

Do all this think is you making us texting human internet email somehow and less?

Internet do all think you this email texting and making less is human us somehow?

Think this you do all and texting is making human less email internet us somehow?

Do and you making think all us texting email this internet human somehow is less?

Do you think all this texting email and internet is making us less human somehow?

I used a computer to randomize the fundamental fifteen-word question posed by a human [me]: “Do you think all this texting email and internet is making us less human somehow?” The randomizations create questions that are obviously related to the fundamental question, but meaning is denigrated by syntactical gaps, breaks, dislocations, etc. In struggling to read a few of these bastardized questions, you vaguely perceive the original, intended question, but comprehension is labored and fuzzy.

From this perspective, comparing just one of these randomized questions to the fundamental question provides a poetic metaphor of the difference between Cyber-social interaction and pre-Cyber, face to face, in the same physical space, Human social interaction.

Face to face, in the same physical space, Human social interaction is dense, with meaning amplified, buttressed, nuanced, modulated, etc by:

·         Gesture, posture, dynamics of personal space, etc

·         Inflections of tone, volume, pitch, timber, tempo, etc

·         Facial expression, including the subtle eyes, often described as windows to the soul

·         Etc

In comparison, Cyber-interaction is the dim shadow of a fragrant, glorious flower … A flower less and less in the sunlight as people invest more and more time and social energy in the Cyber-cave.

Stepping outside, I see vast, fragrant fields of tulips, lavender, daisies, poppies  … a thousand varieties … slowly morphing to plastic, dime store replicas …

More on this topic in the New Year ...


Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com