Category Archives: Ahimsa

Dream

Remembering more dreams lately, a flurry of them in recent nights, as my imagination seemingly tries to recharge itself in the face of objectively dispiriting circumstances that call for heroic feats of imagining.  

At the end of last night’s I was, for the first time in years, back in that phantom second apartment of mine, the large space connected to my own cramped apartment where I stumble from time to time, wondering that I never use those rooms.   In the bathroom of the second apartment there was a dark blur of movement and a rustle behind the towel hanging on the rack.  It was a brown cat, at first afraid and then reassured by my quiet and calmness.  I kneeled and it came over, affectionate.  Petted the cat as I thought of the unused resources in my life and the sometimes terrible burden of our personal histories.

History can, and often does, repeat itself, but it is a mistake to feel that parallels between things happening now and things that happened in the past make the same outcome inevitable.  Dream and continue to breathe, sleep, eat well and exercise, only time will tell.

Cultivate Mindful Empathy

I urge myself today– take a calligraphy pen and write it again, as handsomely and lovingly as you can:  cultivate mindful empathy.

Though it’s difficult, particularly when feeling dispirited and abandoned by friends and family alike: remember to be aware of the troubles of others and not to minimize them.   Remember to be sensitive to what others are suffering, even when it may seem senseless to you.  Yesterday a friend, thinking of people who mistreated him decades ago, expressed understandable thoughts of revenge.   As one of the most remarkable people I’ve met, the late, great Fran MacDonald, often said, to great effect: “I understand.”  

Think about the power of that simple response:  I understand.  I hear you, I feel what you’re saying, I have digested the import to you.   On the other hand, it may have been Fran’s way of gently telling me to shut up whenever I complained, which was often.  

A talent for complaint, a genius for it, really, runs in my family.  It just comes naturally to some people.  “You’d complain if you were hung with a new rope,” my father observed to his only son more than once.

Just the other day, in the context of complaining about the many weaknesses of the so-called Affordable Care Act,  I compared our brilliant president’s many laudable speeches with his many less laudable actions, to the great annoyance of a friend who thinks Obama is a great man.  The president has spoken eloquently about the need for a transparent government while invoking the 1917 Espionage Act to intimidate leakers and maintaining an administration more opaque, less accessible to journalists and seekers of information under the Freedom of Information Act, than even the secretive Cheney’s administration was.  Net neutrality, equal access to all websites, at equal speed, is something the president has often correctly called a cornerstone of democracy.  He has pledged over and over to defend it, his ominous appointments to the board that will decide who can sell what at which internet speed and service notwithstanding.  His first official act as president was symbolically closing Guantanamo Bay prison, showing that his heart is in the right place; never mind the devilish details of the many uncharged prisoners, detained now for more than a decade, that we are force feeding there as they try to starve themselves to death.  A commitment to renewable energy, laudable, and new records for petro-fuel extraction quietly applauded by the oil companies.   Add the boom The Wall Street Journal crowed about: pumping thousands of gallons of secret, highly toxic chemical stews into the earth in order to extract trapped, and highly profitable, natural gas from deep inside the earth.  The worrisome Keystone pipeline that will transport tar sand sludge thousands of miles, from Koch Brother owned land in Canada to refineries in the American Gulf of Mexico that will extract gasoline from it, so far Obama has only approved the southern half of it for operation.    No reason, but past experience, to believe he will OK the crucial northern half of the pipeline.

By the way, I learned recently that the Koch Brothers’ father was a founding member of the John Birch Society, the outfit that contended then president Dwight D. Eisenhower was an agent of Communism.   The old reactionary is smiling in his grave at how skillfully his billionaire sons are advancing his old agenda.   Breeding will out, I suppose.

I say these critical things about our president sadly and fully realizing the virulent hatred this half-black man faces, the troubled, divided, ravished country he inherited and the additional pressure to accommodate that is placed on him, as a half-black man and our first “post-racial” president.

But I was talking about empathy a moment ago.  I can hear the haters, and I should pause to understand:  

Whoa, nothing “half” about it, dude.  We are stricter here than the good folks who made the Nuremberg Laws.  One half black equals black.  Shoot, a damn quadroon is black!  Same for an octoroon, damn it.   We American racists are strict, son, what the hell you talkin’ about “half-black”?   Did you bother taking a look at him lately?  The only half-black thing about him is his damn policies, and his embrace of virtually every policy G.W. Bush ever enacted, and that’s the only good half.  The indisputable fact is: the man’s still black.

Which puts me in mind of my friend, the fan of Obama’s, and his measured, reasonable sounding point about incrementalism.  With all the faults of Obamacare, he said, it’s a step in the right direction that was made against unprecedented, rabid opposition and something that no previous president had the courage or political will to do.  Leaving aside that it may in many ways favor the profits of private insurance companies over the needs of American medical patients, that it leaves millions of Americans without insurance, that it makes no sense compared to a public option, it is still a step, an incremental improvement over what came before.  Of course, he works for a corporation that provides his health insurance and so is not directly effected by it, but he’s read a great deal about the details and knows many things about the law that he’s sure even those suffering under it don’t know.

I gave him an example of incrementalism from history that caused him to crease his brow and agree to disagree.  After the Civil War the 14th Amendment guaranteed the rights of citizenship to all Americans, promising due process and equal protection of the laws [1].  It also granted Congress the power to pass any laws necessary to enforce its provisions against recalcitrant states, formerly in rebellion and forced by economic necessity to ratify the amendment as a condition for federal aid, that might be intent on violating these rights.  

Within a few years of the Amendment’s ratification, in the depths of a severe economic depression caused in large part by the war to preserve or abolish slavery, the Supreme Court clarified matters.  The privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States were spelled out explicitly by the wise and unappealable jurists of the nation’s high court:  the right to migrate freely from state to state, the right to freely use navigable interstate waterways and a third, equally important right of citizenship.  

The remaining privileges and immunities of American citizenship, the Court held, were the business of the States, and if the Ku Klux Klan itself ran the damned state, well, that was not the business of the federal government, unless, of course, the State was trying to abridge any of those three enumerated rights.  Case closed.  “Call me pisher,” as my grandfather used to say.

That remained the constitutional law of the land for more than 90 years, talk about incremental.  It remained so until some clever New York radical attorneys came up with a way to invoke the long slumbering century-old enforcement statute, never repealed,  to enforce the 14th Amendment, after the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in June 1964,  down in the bowels of Mississippi.  Courageous southern judges on the federal bench ruled that the old statute could be used to bring such cases into federal court.  It has been used, literally millions of times, since, after a refreshing almost hundred year nap, to enforce the original intent of the 14th amendment. 

In that Mississippi trial, by the way, seven of the nineteen accused members of the lynch mob who murdered Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, after indictments against them were dismissed and the dismissal was overturned by the Supreme Court, eventually were convicted and sentenced to three to ten long years in prison [2].  The grinning sheriff was not convicted, though his deputy eventually served four years of his six year sentence.  Incrementalism, my man, something to be happy about — if you live to be 150 or so.

It is easy to be distracted, that’s for sure.  What is hard, and well worth doing, is cultivating mindful empathy.  It is at times very hard.  I suppose those are the times when it is most worth doing.  Today would be a good day for me to work on it.  It’s either that or jump out of my skin, leap onto my skeleton, already posed horse-like, and gallop off howling.

Come to think of it, that might be a better idea.

 

[1]  No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

[2]  On December 29 (1967), Judge Cox imposed sentences.  Roberts and Bowers got ten years, Posey and Price got six years, and the other three convicted defendants got four.  Cox said of his sentences, “They killed one nigger, one Jew, and a white man– I gave them all what I thought they deserved.”   source

 

Letting Go of the Dying

Four years ago today my mother died.   She had been in a deep sleep at the Hospice by the Sea (miles from the sea, but a nice place nonetheless) for almost 24 hours, sleeping through her 82nd birthday.  She eventually breathed her last and was gone.

Last night I spoke to an old friend whose mother, at 90, has been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for many years.  She long ago lost the ability to move without pain and has been bed-ridden for the last few years.  In recent months she has virtually lost the ability to speak.  When she could still speak she would frequently tell her daughter that she wanted to die.   Of course, dying is not as easy as merely wanting to die.

“She makes her wishes pretty clear though,” my friend complained, after confirming that her mother is silent most of the time, except when crying out in pain.  It bothers her, the way her mother clenches her teeth against food and water, for example.

My friend’s sister is a doctor, she arranged for intravenous hydration and nutrition for the dying woman, as well as blood thinners and other medications to prolong the dying woman’s life.   The bags of nutrition cost $100 a day.   There has been trouble getting people to keep the port clean, very hard to find skilled nursing people who will also stay for a 12 hour shift, and overnight.  Unless one has unlimited funds, of course, which my friend and her family don’t.  So the two sisters perform most of the medical procedures.

I spent some time listening to my friend’s intense frustration with Hospice, which was reluctantly invited into the picture last week.   The social worker and nurses, as described, sound like a bunch of insensitive bureaucrat assholes.  On the other hand, they are dealing with two adults who will not honor their mother’s expressed wishes and are doing everything possible to keep her alive as long as possible.

“My nephew’s graduation is June 4,” my friend tells me wearily, and that’s one reason they want their mother to live a few weeks longer.  Not that she will be at the graduation, but it would be very inconvenient for everybody to have a funeral in the short time between now and the graduation.

On the other hand, two weeks is a lifetime of misery for a woman in chronic pain whose daughters are spending thousands of dollars to make sure she lives until at least June 5th.

“She’s so angry,” observed my friend.

I told her the story Mickey Rourke told to James Lipton.  He’d been very protective of his little brother for the kids’ entire life.  The younger brother had some deadly disease and clung to life for a long time after he should have been dead.   Rourke sat by his bed every day.  The hospice nurse called him into the kitchen.

“And I knew what she was gonna say.  She told me my brother had lived months longer than anyone she’d ever cared for with his disease and told me he was clinging to life because I wouldn’t let him go.  She said I had to tell him it was OK to go.”

“Jesus,” said Lipton, “she said that to you?”

“Yeah, so I went in and said ‘it’s OK, I love you and you can go.’”

“How long did it take him to die after that?” Lipton asked.

“About 20 seconds,” said Rourke.

She was impressed by this story.  It is an impressive story.   But she is not ready to let her mother go.

I told her the story from the beginning of Sherwin Nuland’s excellent How We Die.  I admitted to her that I’d never read much of the highly lauded book, but told her about the unforgettable opening chapter.   

Nuland, a resident, emerges from a hospital room drenched in sweat and close to hyperventilating.   An older doctor calms him and asks what happened.  Nuland described a terminally ill patient, in his nineties, who went into cardiac arrest while Nuland was making his rounds.  He’d spent twenty minutes frantically performing every heroic measure possible to bring the man back from death, but had been unsuccessful.

The older doctor reminded him that the patient was in his nineties, waiting to die from a wasting disease.   He asked Nuland what kind of favor he would have done the old man by reviving him to live a few more hours or days when his wait to die was now over.

My friend was impressed by this story too.   But she is still not ready to let her mother go.

I told her other stories, about my father’s death, and my mother’s.  About how hard it is to let someone you love go.   I told her that as they approach their deaths their final autonomy is all they have left, that it must be about their wishes, and not our wishes for them.  And how approaching death from a terminal disease often follows a pattern.  The person begins withdrawing from the world and eventually loses the desire to eat or drink and just wants to be done.

“If you expressed a wish not to eat and drink, which is one of the final signs that a person is ready to die, and you were hydrated and given nutrition against you will, you wouldn’t like it,” I pointed out.

“No,” my friend said, “I wouldn’t.”

We spoke a little longer and in the end, before wishing her strength and urging her again to get rid of the Hospice if they didn’t quickly shape up, I stated the obvious.  “You and your sister are not ready to let your mother go.”  She agreed.  I wished her a good night’s sleep and told her we’d talk soon.   She sounded grateful for the conversation in an otherwise terrifying void.

But I’m sure another box of nutrition and hydration supplies is being ordered today, as I reflect on the relentless sorrows of this world.

The Kind of Dog Dog Kickers Kick

People who kick dogs are cowards, let’s face it.   Unless the dog is attacking you or a loved one, or a helpless person nearby, in which case you are within your rights to kick the dog.

It is the kind of dogs people usually kick that shows best what such people are made of.   Do you think Mastiffs are often kicked?   The only people who kick large, powerful dogs are those cowards so filled with rage and hatred that they have a powerful, large caliber gun in the other hand as they kick the dog.  The same “equalizer” the overseer always had at hand when whipping slaves on the rich guy’s plantation.

The typical dog kicker’s dog?  A small, sad-eyed dog who cannot fight back.  A little terrier, a Chihuahua, a toy poodle.

 

Golfito (1)

I’ve taken a vow of nonviolence.  It is a hard vow to keep in a violent world filled with enraged acting-out cowards.  That worm who kicked me on the train the other day– if he did it out of clumsiness, why not say “sorry”?   If too oblivious or enraged to have second thoughts after solidly kicking a sleeping man’s ankle, the best remedy for such behavior is a quick tug on the kicker’s head and a sudden jerk of the face to the subway door.  Bam!

This will possibly deter the man the next time, make him think twice before booting a man thirty years his senior (perhaps I reminded him of the father he always hated).   More likely it will only cause him to seek smaller dogs to kick, maybe even blind ones.

The cycle of rage and violence cannot be corrected by violence, of course, though it is the only language spoken by many in a violent society like ours.  True mildness, coupled with unfailing directness, is a better corrective– though very fucking hard to practice.

Living in the Moment

Easier said than done, of course, but worth focusing on if a person is to live their life as productively as possible.   Nothing that happened a few days ago, or in childhood, should cast a dark enough shadow on the moment to prevent it from being lived fully.  Easy to say, hard to do.

 

An action brings up a strong, familiar feeling that was so painful so many times? Very hard to remain in the moment, with that old tightness in the lungs, choking down the desire to strike back somehow.   A friend keeps saying “remember, we are not helpless eight year-olds now.”  True dat, though it’s something the feelings don’t always take into consideration.

 

Days spent stewing over the disrespectful, pugnacious, other-blaming “office manager” at the local tax-in-the-box where I have been trying to have my tax filed.  Feet up on the desk, legs apart, ESPN flashing box scores on the screen next to him, a smirk like a sideways ass crack on his face, he said, after a week of zero service, lying and wrong information given “you can’t intimidate me by trying to get my boss’s contact info.  I’m not giving it to you anyway.”   He then added, for the benefit of his cow-faced associates, and to make his contempt crystal clear, “you’re the only customer I’ve ever had a problem with.”

 

That the problem he referred to was his failure to keep any of several promises to the customer, or to follow up, or to have the correct software installed for the half hour late appointment, or confidently giving the wrong advice regarding what needed to be filed, and the rest?  Not his problem.  The problem of the unreasonable customer, you dig?

 

I spent days unable to stop choking over having my nose rubbed in my “powerlessness”, even as a paying customer, or the 48 hour delay in his immediate supervisor getting back to me (I dug up her email address from a correspondence a year ago), pleasantly, only mildly defensive.   I wrote back to her, making sure she forwarded our correspondence to her boss. Then, because we live in a society where nobody apologizes voluntarily, and offense is often employed to bolster defense, she felt compelled to add that my tax filing was a year late (I owe no tax, so that’s not strictly relevant) and that she “left a message immediately after i had completed the return with information provided and knew exactly what I needed to finalize the return.  I will ask Michelle to call.  Have a great weekend.”

 

To which I replied: 

 

YOU knew exactly what you needed to finalize the return, you are just sharing that with me now, more than a week after my appointment. Have a great weekend

 

The meaning of that “have a great weekend” is universally understood in this context.  Not ten minutes later, the call I’d been waiting a week for arrived.  Michelle, the boss, eventually conceded that she was sorry that I felt I had not received good service.  

 

I corrected her.  She should not be sorry that I felt I had not received good service, she should acknowledge that the service I received was objectively the opposite of good service.  She needed to acknowledge that anyone would have felt disrespected by the unprofessional treatment I’d received. That I was not looking for an apology because my sensitive feelings were hurt, but because I was put through an unprofessional and disrespectful series of aggravations that nobody, let alone a paying customer, should ever have to tolerate.  She conceded as much, telling me that she was sorry and would talk to the jerk in question about his attitude.  

 

And because I was reasonable, and didn’t browbeat her once I’d extracted the apology, things going forward will be fine whenever I get the paperwork this jackass told me I don’t need.

 

In the midst of it, when all that exists is an unwanted, undeserved hassle with a belligerent and unyielding moron, there is no completely putting it out of mind, no 100% focus available for the other difficult concentrated work a person in a tight corner must do to get out of that corner.   In the moment, all is possible, truly, if you can focus completely on what you have immediately in front of you to focus on.   Dealing with multiple moments at once, or several aggravating ones at once, is a recipe for bad karma, poor sleep and unhealthy eating.

Better to breathe, smile, remember what you love to do, and do it as much of the time as you can arrange to do it.

Reminder: there’s rarely a good reason to twitch

Yeah, yeah, the twitch reflex, I know, as primitive and deep as reflexes go.   Something surprises you from the periphery: flinch!  True, and a good practice, to err on the side of caution, good for survival.

But I am thinking about the times I feel hurried, and twitchy, and, moving quickly, sometimes stumble, when what I need to do is take a moment to pause, breathe, gather poise, realize that five or ten seconds are better spent doing this than starting to sprint with a shoelace untied.  

An important thing I was reminded of yesterday, as I delivered well-thought out remarks in a rushed and not well-thought out way.   A lot was going on, I had many things on my mind, the stakes in some ways were high– all the more reason to remember:  take a moment to take it all in, smile, pause.  Being gracious enough can often be lost when rushing, as it was yesterday.  Be gracious, then breathe again.    

Then, be gracious.  Take a moment, smile, look around, breathe.  Then, after a human pause, be gracious.  

 

Gratefulness gently triumphs over sorrow

Gratefulness, that I got to see my old friend before she went, grateful that something pressed me to make sure I kept our long overdue appointment days before she kept her last one. Grateful for a lovely, lesiurely meeting, it turned from 11:04 pm to 1:00 a.m. in the wink of an eye and I was bundling into my filthy parka and she was remarking that I looked like an explorer.   Grateful that she seems to have gone peacefully in her chair.

Grateful to have known her, and loved her, and to have been loved by her for so many  decades.   Grateful for the light she shed, and the love of her mysterious calling that she wore so lightly, and by her great example, taught me to wear lightly.  

Grateful that she laughed and agreed when I asked her if she’d mind if I began to hold myself out as her protégé.  She treated it as an absurd request I was playing for laughs.  I was, she had a great laugh, but I was also dead serious.  The woman was a major role model.

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