If you are under the age of 40, do not read this entry. It reveals a mystery. Or it tries to.<\/p>\n
In the late 1970s, as I wrote about here<\/a>, M. and I attended several of the Church of Wicca’s<\/a> Samhain Seminars, one of the earliest Pagan hotel-type gatherings in the United States, after Carl Weschcke’s Gnosticons. (Their descendent is the United Earth Assembly<\/a>.)<\/p>\n We were among “the kids.” Many of the attendees were older, and a number of men were professional engineers with an interest in fringe and far-out technology. (This was the era of homemade biofeedback gadgetry, among other things.) <\/p>\n One speaker gave a presentation on extreme-low-frequency radio transmissions (ELF)<\/a> and its possible effects on the human brain. “They” were testing it around 4 a.m., he said, not specifying a time zone. <\/p>\n “Don’t you find yourself waking up around then, confused and depressed?” he asked the mostly middle-aged audience–or words to that effect.<\/p>\n I was a little puzzled, because I usually slept soundly all night. M. is a world-class insomniac, so it’s no use asking her. “Four o’clock creeps” is her term.<\/p>\n Years passed, and now I understand. Waking at 4 a.m. and lying awake reviewing all the ways in which your life has been a total waste is a normal feature of middle age. Perhaps men are more prone to this affliction than women, but I have not carried out a study. I could be wrong. <\/p>\n I have been reading several books that run headlong into the same question.<\/p>\n Poet, novelist, and screenwriter Jim Harrison<\/a> threw away a promsing academic career to be a freelancer, and after years of hard times enjoyed some major successes. But he was always on the edge of going over the edge, he writes in his memoir Off to the Side<\/em><\/a>. Fishing, hunting, and periods of solitude helped keep him sane. After a lot of aphoristic writing (sample: “When a writer feels embattled, the next step is paranoia, which is only rarely justified.”), Harrison concludes,<\/p>\n I don’t feel an ounce of ‘closure’ about finishing this memoir. I’ll just see how far this life carries me. . . . My life could have been otherwise but it wasn’t.”<\/em><\/p>\n If anyone ever asks me to write a memoir, I am going to steal that line: “My life could have been otherwise, but it wasn’t.”<\/p>\n Edward Abbey<\/a>, who likewise was an overnight success after twenty years of hard work, wrote in his diary, “Trouble, trouble trouble. Except for sweet things like [his kids] Clarke and Rebecca, my life seems to me a dismal failure. . . 58 years old and I ‘ve never learned to do ‘anything practical, useful, sociable.'”<\/p>\n Abbey is quoted in another memoir, Doug Peacock’s<\/a> Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness<\/em><\/a>. The Veterans Administration says that Peacock himself is 100-percent disabled with post-traumatic stress syndrome from his Green Beret days in Vietnam. But he manages to write too, so what excuse do I have?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are under the age of 40, do not read this entry. It reveals a mystery. Or it tries to. In the late 1970s, as I wrote about here, M. and I attended several of the Church of Wicca’s Samhain Seminars, one of the earliest Pagan hotel-type gatherings in the United States, after Carl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-bl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":860,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=860","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":0},"title":"VA Approves the Wiccan Pentagram","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The first message (from a Pagan staffer at the American Academy of Religion) hit my inbox at 12:28 today, and then the Colorado Pagan email lists lit up: The Veterans Adminstration approved the pentagram for veterans' grave markers. (Pentagram, pentacle, same thing as far as the news media are concerned.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":458,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=458","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":1},"title":"Witchcraft and Magic: North AmericaAs\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft and Magic: North AmericaAs long as I am promoting books that I myself have not had an opportunity to read yet (but will when I can), look for Helen Berger's new anthology from the University of Pennsylvania Press, covering North America in the \"Witchcraft and Magic\" series. You can\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8278","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":2},"title":"Pentagram Pizza: Toppings Begone!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 The Roman Catholic Church in the United States reports a shortage of exorcists, says a British newspaper. In lengthy interviews with The Telegraph, the two exorcists discuss how the increase in drug and pornography addiction, failure of the mental healthcare system and a rise in popularity of \"pagan activities\",\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagrampizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pentagrampizza.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":962,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=962","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":3},"title":"Is This a Nation of Only Monotheistic Believers?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Under the United Blogging Act of 2005, I should have said something about Mitt Romney's speech about how being a Mormon does not make him unfit to be president.Hrafnkell picked up on a news release from Americans United, a group that did a lot for us during the pentacle grave-marker\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":4},"title":"Wicca’s appeal among the young","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Wicca's Wicked Appeal among the Young The Catholic news agency Zenit offers this interview with journalist","rel":"","context":"In \"Wicca\"","block_context":{"text":"Wicca","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=wicca"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1305,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1305","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":5},"title":"A Vodou Resource Site","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Lots of talk about Vodou lately here among the polytheists (and among those who \"view with alarm\").Christopher Chase, the Pomegranate's reviews editor, offers this link to a sort of portal site on Vodou. Reviews editors are like that.","rel":"","context":"In \"Voudoun\"","block_context":{"text":"Voudoun","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=voudoun"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}