Category Archives: Ahimsa

“The Record”

For the record, I should note that generally, except for a few technical, crucial, implacable details set forth in the official record, for the general public there is really no official “going on the record”.   The exact content of the official record is something for very well-paid lawyers to argue about with the government’s lawyers.  The general public is often allowed a single participatory session to express its opinions on the matters under debate/ They speak “on the record”, but strictly speaking, their contributions to the record do not include any direct input into the debate, except through the votes of their elected officials (all of whom, in this case, appear to weaselishly favor a secretive economic development plan their constituents hate in overwhelming majorities). 

I spent a few hours today writing a statement for the record on that matter of urgent public concern, written comments had to be in within a few days of last night’s public meeting.   Good day’s work for a Friday.   In one way writing a statement for the record was a gesture of futility and, at best, a symbolic protest.  In another sense, and the way I thought of it, it was my clear duty as a citizen and neighbor to write on our mutual behalf.   I’m always happy to use my writing to try to convince someone to do the right thing.  This writing is partly sad, and partly also, writing it is a very helpful meditation exercise — feeling my way toward the connections to make this story more personal, a story to move an emotional individual toward mercy and away from a knee jerk to violence.

Anyway, I sent a copy of my previous post out to several friends and to my sister.  I wanted to let them know what I found myself up against, what I learned, how clearly I hopefully was able to describe it, and to eventually get a pat on the head or two from even one or two of them.

To my lawyer colleague and friend of almost half a century I offered the link:
Check this shit out, for a short busman’s holiday.   Anonymous frontmen for some Jareds and Donalds have their beady eyes on my neighborhood, and they spent $1,000,000 in public funds laying out a radical rezoning plan.   We’re all about to be fucked, so I went on “the record” the day after the sole “Public Hearing” into this matter of public concern the public had no other input into.

To my sister, who had recently compared me to her husband, a man she described as sitting in his easy chair and yelling at the TV, I wrote:

You can either yell at the TV or take action of some kind.  The most recent action I’m taking is to put my opposition to the planned sale of my neighborhood “on the record”.  I was encouraged that the public hearing last night was packed.  I think the facts I set out below speak for themselves, as did many of the community residents who spoke very well last night in opposition to this boondoggle for rapacious wealthy fucks.  150 neighborhood people signed up to speak, I heard about the first 40, then went home to start putting this together as my public comment.

The fucks will probably ram this corrupt rezoning plan through, because that’s what the lawyers who work for the Jareds and the Donalds get paid to do.  These types are allowed to ram rezoning plans down the throats of local opposition because their poop emits no foul odor and so forth.  The sweetness of their excretions does nothing to relieve the rest of us of our duty as democratic citizens to oppose their foul, if odorless, plans.

>Anyway, read on for the sickening/encouraging details.

To a thirty-two year old neighbor, an ecologist and an idealistic environmentalist, son of two of my oldest and dearest friends, I wrote:

Don’t know if you made it to the meeting last night about the proposed rezoning of Inwood.  To my surprise there was a raucous, standing room only crowd in the auditorium of the school across from the 9 cent store on Broadway and Academy.   150 people signed up to speak (I made it through the first 40 or so), so I contented myself with submitting this comment for the record.   You have until the end of February to submit a written comment, if you are so inspired.

 

Waking from Unsettling Dreams

In the first dream I was in and out of a bar that was headquarters for a violent motor cycle gang reminiscent of the Sons of Anarchy.   The tough men and women in there tolerated me, nobody seeming to even notice me.   I didn’t interact with anyone, I was just there, passing through.   I don’t know why I was there, I wasn’t drinking and rarely enter bars of any kind in real life.   I returned to the bar several times in the course of the dream.   

Around me fights got out of control, people were killed.  Some of the dead bodies were displayed outside the bar in grotesque positions, reminiscent of the crucified left as grim examples to others considering defiance of Rome.   At one point in our history crucified bodies were displayed in long lines, to the horizon.   It was a terrible dream, although I felt myself to be in no danger.   

In hindsight, the violence seemed virtually random, I could have been next, except that nobody paid any attention to my comings and goings.   The bar, I realize now, was set on curving, residential Marengo Street in Jamaica Estates, a place I visited often as a child.  

The second dream shook me up in a different way.   I’d invited a former good friend over, among a group of people I’d invited to my apartment that evening.  The former friend in question, I’ll call him Andy, had demonstrated to me in real life how little our friendship meant to him, how superior he felt to me and how illegitimate and pathetic he thought my feelings of hurt were.  During our last conversation he was unrepentant and even bullying, over the phone.  He may have been equally unrepentant in person, but I doubt he would have tried to bully me face to face.

This dream was unsettling to me for reasons unlike the couple of other bad dreams I’ve had where this guy shows up.   In those dreams I am shaken up afterwards by the palpable feeling of violence I experience.  He does something provocative and I react with anger, shove him, slap his face hard, kick him after knocking him down.   This shakes me up because I am dedicated to being as nonviolent as possible in word and deed (not that I’d meekly let someone attack me, don’t get any ideas).  In the most recent dream it was much different.

He’d set fire to some things in my kitchen and several of us struggled to put the flames out.   I knew at the time that this pyromania was a manifestation of his mental illness and not anything malicious directed at me.  Like with my often vicious father, I realized he could not help himself.   Others at the gathering reacted with anger, I didn’t.  When they began verbally attacking him I told them that I’d invited him and that he was my guest just like they were.   

As I was defending him he lit another fire and I took a cooking pot and banged it loudly on the wall next to his head.  I yelled at him.  I scared the shit out of him.  He disappeared.  We managed to put out the new fire.  Then I heard sirens, which grew closer and closer.  Somebody called out that someone had called the fire department. 

I opened the door and Andy was standing in the hallway, a shattered expression on his face.  He told me sheepishly that he’d called the fire department.  I took this as the best apology somebody as damaged as he is can offer.  I patted the side of his face and a fireman stepped through my front door.     I assured the fireman that the small kitchen fire was under control, he made a quick round of the apartment, signaled his colleague and they took off. 

This dream was fucked up in more ways than I can count.  

I was fairly wide awake, after very short sleep, and I succinctly recounted the dreams to Sekhnet, who was getting ready to go to work.   I mentioned to her that I had to find a new nephrologist, most likely, to follow up with the treatment of my kidney disease.   The need to find yet another new nephrologist is likely because my fucking health insurance changed in 2018.  She asked when I was going to make an appointment to see the Integrative Medicine doctor I’d spoken to months back, a man trained to view the body/mind/emotions as a holistic ecosystem [1]. 

My kidney disease, while eventually deadly, is not serious enough to inspire big pharmaceutical research dollars to be invested in it.  Its cause is unknown to science.  The specialists I’ve visited are blind men clutching the elephant’s tail, ear, leg, penis, promising the darts they throw in a dark room have a decent chance, as high as 30%, of curing what will eventually kill me, if not cured.

Maybe that’s all the unsettling dreams were supposed to do, wake me up and remind me to find a new nephrologist, take perhaps a thousand dollars and go visit this holistic doctor.   We are all heading toward death.  In my case, this kidney disease may not even be the thing that eventually kills me.   

Having this disease is enough to wake me up, though, and not want to waste time.   Writing something thoughtful every day, until I can figure out how to get some of this organized and read, and get some money for it, seems to be the most productive use of however many days or years I have remaining to me. 

Isn’t that the challenge of every human life?  Finding a meaning that gives beauty to the colors around us, music to the sounds we hear and excellent taste to the food we eat?   Satisfaction in our work, pleasure in our play.   A sense of connection to others that makes us cherish them as beings as precious as we ourselves are.

 

[1]  ho·lis·tic  (adjective)

PHILOSOPHY:  characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

MEDICINE:  characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the physical symptoms of a disease.

 

All I Want

I think I can put this simply and accurately: a dialogue.   What do I want that dialogue to be about?  That’s secondary.   

The main thing is that everything said is heard and digested and what is said back relates to that thing, expands the subject we’re talking about, leads to further understanding, even insight.   Too often the subject and the discussion are circumscribed by many factors. 

If a family member is in a cult, for example, a full discussion of that cult is impossible.  The family member may insist that it is not a cult at all, “cult” being an ignorant and pejorative label imposed by outsiders, but reality in its purest form.  A detailed and open dialogue on the subject is not in the cards, no matter how much mutual goodwill is present.   Often people join cults as a response to a need to be accepted that is not fulfillable anywhere else.   It is not productive to point something like this out to someone who follows a true path laid out by a superior being.

I can think of many situations where an honest conversation is not ever going to happen.  My best hope for that is often here, setting my thoughts and feelings out with as much clarity as I can muster.  Sad, in a way, this ongoing conversation with myself and an imaginary reader, and a great blessing in another way.  I will take the blessing any day. 

Sadness is part of every sentient being’s lot here, and so be it.   A blessing, my friend, is a blessing, and I will take a blessing every day of the week, including today, a day when I am late to get about my rounds.

So if you’ll please excuse me…

Cutting Contest

Sekhnet took me to see the incomparable Tommy Emmanuel at Town Hall last night.   He put on his usual great show, playing with virtuosity and joy throughout.   It’s a unique experience being moved by some beautiful and complicated playing and at virtually the same instant laughing at some offhand shtick the guy does at the same time.   The man is that good.   If you ever get a chance to see Tommy live, just go see him.

It’s clear watching him play how much he loves what he is doing.  He got that good because, in addition to the talent that God gave him, he loved what he was doing enough to do it for a million hours over the decades.  His joy and sense of how much fun he’s having is infectious.   After his opening number I turned to the guy next to me, another guitarist, and said “damn, he just keeps getting better!”  My neighbor agreed.  “Like a fine wine,” he said with a satisfied smile.

It was something the guy next to me said before the show that inspires what I’m thinking about now.   We were discussing guitarists we admire and at one point I mentioned some younger blues players I’d heard for the first time in recent years, including a passionate player named Jonny Lang.   He nodded and told me I should check out the youtube of Lang and Eric Gales trading riffs.  He’d started the conversation telling me about Gales.   

“At one point the crowd is urging Gales to cut Lang, and you can see the results, I mean Lang didn’t have a chance ….”

I stopped him to say I never got the point of cutting contests.  We didn’t get a chance to pursue the subject further, because Tommy Emmanuel took the stage and that was that.

You can read about cutting contests going all the way back.  A great trumpet player came to town, there was a jam session after the show.  The local trumpet king would bring his horn and proceed to try to out-blow the star trumpet player.  It was like gunslingers, making a name for themselves by outdrawing the fastest gun in the west.   It always struck me as an idiotic misuse of talent, an ego-driven exercise in being an asshole.  Or a killer.

As a guitar player I’ve found myself in these situations a few times over the years at jam sessions.   The session is, to some guitarists, not about playing the best music we can invent, it’s about proving who is the best guitar player.  To me the best guitar player is the one who always plays exactly what you want to hear in the music.  Nice inversions of chords set perfectly against what the singer is singing.  A little bass riff that sets up what another instrument is doing.   One note, vibrating plaintively against a series of harmonies.  Sometimes it’s playing your ass off in tandem with another instrument, riffing off what the other player is doing.  I never see it as a contest and if I’m in a room where others do, it can sometimes be a long session.

A cutting contest has nothing to do with tasteful collaboration.   It’s about showing off.  It is a no holds barred competition for who is top dog.  I never understood that shit.  I know that professional musicians are often egotistical and competitive, that’s how they get to the the top of their game.  I suppose the cutting contest has some place in that world, though I’m pretty sure not everyone in that world engages in cutting contests.

But in a group of pissants renting a practice room to make some joyful noise? I mean, seriously, what the fuck?   Who is the best pissant guitarist?  Really, this is a question you think should be answered now?  Determining matters of dominance and submission instead of pursuing the highest quality musical interaction we can come up with?   

Ranking professional guitarists is dumb in any event, it’s largely a matter of taste.   Vying for supremacy with other amateur guitarists is useless at best.  You can play with virtually anyone unless they play out of tune, off time, too loud.    If you don’t like the way they play you don’t play with them anymore.  But a cutting contest among pissant guitarists?  This really how you want to waste our precious time?  Figuring out who will get to solo and who will hold down the rhythm part?

Tommy Emmanuel told a story that illuminated the issue beautifully.   His mother loved to sing and strummed a guitar and later took up lap steel guitar.   She needed an accompanist for her lap steel playing and, around the time Tommy began kindergarten, she taught him a few chords on guitar and he became her rhythm guitar player.   He couldn’t wait for school to be over so he could run home and play rhythm guitar for his mother.    His older brother Phil soon thereafter took up guitar, and he too wanted Tommy to play rhythm behind him.   He did it happily, for years.

The guitarists I love best, and I think mainly of Jimi Hendrix and Django Reinhardt in this regard, were brilliant rhythm players.  Jimi said all guitar playing is rhythm guitar playing, and it made a big impression on me.  Django could play an accompaniment like nobody’s business, hard to imagine anyone doing it better.  If you can’t play the rhythm part to one of Django’s tunes, you have no hope of playing any other part of it.

When I was learning to play two guitarists would take turns playing rhythm guitar and lead guitar.  Think of the Beatles in their early rock ‘n roll days, John banged out the rhythm part that moved the band, along with the bass and drums, and George played the cool fills and riffs and took the solos.  We’d take turns.  I became a pretty good rhythm player, and I took pride in playing a solid rhythm part.  Sometimes another player would be so inspired by the solid rhythm part I was laying down he’d solo forever, which soured the whole thing for me.

I don’t know how much of the cutting contest mentality is a result of a capitalist mindset that endlessly compares endlessly competing entities and how much is just homo sapiens nature.   We are, after all, largely powerless, and often pissed off, and trying to unsee the terror we know awaits each one of us at the end of our mortal days.  Maybe that fleeting feeling of supremacy when we step on somebody who’s a little weaker is the best we’re going to get that day.   Count me out of that shit.  I’m busy trying to complete a reasonable written accounting of myself while I’m here.

By the way, I enjoyed the clip of Jonny Lang and Eric Gales.  Gales is great.  I don’t think anybody is cutting anybody here.  They are making a joyful noise.  If you like rock and blues guitar, check ’em out (no idea what’s up with Lang’s hairdo, or Gales’ for that matter).  Here you go.

Five Minutes

(Start the clock)   Five minutes is very little time, the cosmic wink of an eye.  Five minutes is a terribly long time to hold your breath.  Five minutes of an awkward pause at an emotionally fraught impasse seems an eternity too.    In reality, five minutes is enough time to express a lot.  

The missile has been launched, is landing in now 3:44 minutes.  Now 3:33.  If I gather my thoughts for thirty seconds I can stop counting down and use my remaining time for whatever may be most important to say to whoever I am with as the universe is about to end for both of us.  Saying “2:17!” adds little to the conversation, though it’s also true.

Now I have one minute and a half left, less.  It seems a good time to point out that a loving attitude is better than a hating one, almost every time.  To remember things we love is a better way to spend these last moments than terrified of that approaching warhead.   There will be a flash in a few seconds, and the end of this beautiful world.

time.