Postcard from the Seashore

As I type this blog entry from our room, which is just above swaying, rustling palms and about forty yards from pounding surf, news reports of near-record snowfalls in the Northeast are enhancing my appreciation of the blue sky and bright sunshine outside. We are staying at the Jupiter Beach Resort & Spa. The beach curves in a jagged arc to the southeast, in front of a state park that begins where the resort's property ends and extends for about three miles. To the north are three condominiums, then more state parkland until the Jupiter Inlet, about three-quarters of a mile away. In a feature unusual for Florida, there are coquina rock formations protruding from the sand at water's edge, for about an eighth of a mile to the south and a quarter of a mile to the north of the hotel.

It is cool today, for this time of year, in this place; but the water is warm enough for pleasant wading in the surf. The waves are rolling in from the northeast, carrying wet-suited surfers obliquely to the shore. The sea has been rough during the three days that we have been here: As the tide rises, the surf's assaults sculpt the coquina, sending foaming spray ricocheting skyward. Today, gray is missing from the seashore's palette: The robin's egg blue and white of the sky and the browns of the beach frame the greens, blues, and whites of the ocean.

Since I was a child, the ever-changing seashore has kept its primeval hold on me: through the sights, sounds, and smells of the ocean pounding against the shore; through the feel of the sand beneath my feet, now soft, now firm, now wet, now dry, now warm, now cool, now coarse, now smooth; through the air's transmission to my skin of the sun's warmth, to my eyes of the sun's glare, to my body of the wind's pressure; through the waves rolling in incessantly, each a life cycle, no two alike, remaking the beach with each advance and retreat, erasing the brief imprint of my footsteps; through the symbiotic life forms in the sea, in the air, and on the shore. The sea itself remains familiar and mysterious to me: Even when calm, danger lurks in its depths, and potential for crushing violence remains stored in its waves. By day, I am mesmerized by the seashore's stupendous juxtaposition of earth, sky, and water. At night, I am comforted by the surf's roar and pounding, the planet's slow, irregular pulse.

Some say that life on earth was born in, and emerged from, the sea. Certainly, life cycles seem as natural to me at the seashore as they did in East Africa or in the Galapagos. I take some solace in thinking that my ashes will be cast into the ocean's vastness: whence some may reemerge on the shore.

Memorial Service

On Monday, February 15, the memorial service for my father will be held at Christ Church in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Tomorrow, Susan and I will fly down to Jupiter, Florida, to enjoy the balmy weather, play golf, see horses, and stroll on the beach. Later in the week, we will drive north to Ponte Vedra to join my gathering family.

Illusory Pattern Perception

On page 30 of the February issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer writes about a study recently published in Science, entitled "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception." Schermer writes: "Defining 'illusory pattern perception'... as 'the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli ... (such as the tendency to perceive false correlations, see imaginary figures, form superstitious rituals, and embrace conspiracy beliefs, among others),' the researchers' thesis was that 'when individuals are unable to gain a sense of control objectively, they will try to gain it perceptually.' "

As I read Schermer's column, it struck me that this thesis explains a lot: not only about belief systems, but also about common perceptions amongst cancer victims and their friends and loved ones. A diagnosis of advanced cancer is certainly conducive to losing a sense of control! 

Sixty-Seven Years

Today, with gratitude and mild bemusement, I greet my sixty-seventh birthday. More than once in the last eleven months, it crossed my mind that I might not live to see it.

Knowledge that I have terminal cancer has heightened my consciousness of the irretrievability of each second ticking away. In my adolescence, the poignancy of time passing was at least equally intense. Clocks, watches, and sundials have always fascinated me. But neither time-keeping devices, nor the workings of memory, can recapture youth's ferocity. 

Tragedy

What's happening in Haiti is tragic. War is tragic. Destruction of species is tragic. A child's or a young parent's affliction with terminal disease, or with terrible, chronic disease, is tragic. Anyone's prolonged suffering is tragic. Wasted human potential is tragic. 

What's happened to me so far is not tragic, beyond the lot of all human beings: fated as we are to know that our lives are finite; that the world itself, and indeed the universe, is finite. In two days, I'll be 67 years old. In all of human history, what percentage of mankind lived so long? Until very recent times in a handful of wealthy nations, life for human beings was indeed short, nasty, and brutish. Darwinian selection did its work amongst humans with little interference. 

My father was born only 45 years after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. I have lived in the most prosperous period of the greatest nation, the most humane society, that has ever existed. I am privileged to have been educated at one of the finest prep schools, one of the finest undergraduate schools, and one of the finest graduate business schools in the United States. My parents were married for almost 71 years; I have been married for 42 years. Until my father died recently, no member of my nuclear family had ever been terminally ill with chronic disease, much less died. I spent the last 24 of my 42 years in business as an entrepreneur, doing constructive work, building businesses alongside bright, high-energy, high-minded, creative people. I have met, and in some cases know, some of the most prominent people in business, technology, finance, science, medicine, education, philanthropy,  journalism, the law, Thoroughbred racing, and various other endeavors. I have found role models amongst both family and friends. Taking into account my laziness, shyness, cowardice, disorganization, and modest talents, I did reasonably well professionally and was able to support my family. I have been able to afford contributions to worthy causes. I haven't had to deal directly with politicians, and I have delegated most interactions with bureaucrats. My wife and I raised our children and have lived our adult lives in perhaps the most interesting city in the world, the Rome of our time. In spite of being a hacker, I have played a number of the finest golf courses in the United States. (I wish that my father had gotten to play as many of them as I have gotten to play!) I have indulged my passion for racehorses in the best of company. My wife and I have travelled to some wonderful places, and we are mulling more travel plans.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer, my family, friends, and caregivers have been kind and supportive. So far, my disease has neither sunk me into chronic depression, nor forced me to retreat into wishful thinking. I have not been subjected to chemotherapy since May, and my medical oncologist just allowed me to delay resumption of it for a while longer.

Given the longevity of my parents, cancer may cost me perhaps a third of my life, but it would not have been the most vigorous third of my life.  Eventually, I might well have gone blind from glaucoma and/or wet macular degeneration, and I would have run most of the other risks of aging that plague mankind. 

I don't see my life as having been significant or especially interesting. As for tragedy: Certainly my cancer is unfortunate and mildly ironic. Like most people, I have had bad luck, regrets, and down times; I've been disappointed and rejected. But I have enjoyed good luck, acceptance, and the satisfactions of success too. I flatter myself that I am still learning, growing, and improving in character. I feel loved by family. And I certainly have had a lot of fun along the way. To the extent that I have suffered from the slings and arrows of fate, I have extracted a measure of revenge by living well-- i.e., by indulging myself.

It seems to me today that any potential for significance and tragedy in my story is captured in words of Eugene O'Neill that I quoted in this blog on January 3: "The tragedy of Man is perhaps the only significant thing about him.... Somebody facing life, fighting against the eternal odds, not conquering, but perhaps inevitably being conquered. The individual life is made significant just by the struggle, and the acceptance and assertion of the individual, making him what he is not, as in the past, making him something not himself." 

 

Anniversary

Today, Susan and I are celebrating our forty-second wedding anniversary. Cheers!

cNs

Given my involvement through Harris & Harris Group, Inc., in nanotechnology, including investments in companies developing cancer therapeutics; my wife's and my long-standing philanthropic support for basic research on cancer; and my recent cancer diagnosis: I am gratified that the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT has established the Center for Nanotechnology Science (cNs). 

To quote from cNs literature: "Many grand challenges of addressing cancer, from detecting a few early malignant cells among billions of healthy cells, to delivering potent drugs to late-stage tumors without harming other tissue, require new approaches that target the miniscule components of cells-- DNA, RNA, proteins-- and their chemical signals and pathways. Nanotechnology, the development and engineering of devices so small that they are measured on a molecular scale, is on the brink of enabling such approaches."

Godspeed.