Category Archives: Ahimsa

Somewhat Ironic Careers

We’ll leave my law license out of this one, I found a scrap of paper just now that had these words on it:

Human Relations Unit Sensitivity trainings led by my sensitive, brilliant father — always on guard against attack.

There were riots between ethnic groups in the NYC public high schools in the 1960s.  Jets and Sharks, they’d square off and rumble, with violent consequences.  A bloody nose or knife wound seems quaint by today’s standards, but my father’s mod squad would be called in and they’d find the leaders of these gangs and take them off to a weekend retreat.  Role playing, a chance to hear each other, guided trainings done by a multi-racial, multi-ethnic team of idealistic former teachers.

“We were pretty successful at stopping the violence at one high school after another with the kids we worked with.  The school would be peaceful for a year or two, until the kids we’d worked with graduated and their little brothers and sisters started killing each other,” my father told us, about the time he left that job for another equally stressful one.

Then, at dinner, the master of human relations and sensitivity training would go to work, reflexively doing what he could not help doing better than almost anyone else in the world. The insensitivity sessions the poor devil ran over dinner were legendary and unforgettable.

Talking to My Son After My Death

Eight, almost nine years in, I’ve learned a few things about this death business, and though I don’t think often of life, as such, in the way that living people do, I am slowly moving forward.   I have been able to hear certain conversations and have plenty of time to muse about them, all the time in the world, literally.   Yesterday you spoke of my attitude on my death bed and it struck me as poignant, the way you believe in certain things, and I’m going to address some of those beliefs now.

We had a life long debate about whether people could really change themselves.  Your upbringing was hard, I was there, I saw it from the beginning, before the beginning.  I played a big role in making that upbringing hard, of course, and am acutely aware of the obstacles I placed in front of you and your sister, how much heavier than necessary I made the rocks you push up the hill of your lives.  

We cannot know, in some cases, what it was exactly that made our parents monstrous in the way they were.  The stories from Europe were shady, muddy, obscured by smoke, and filth, and terror, they ended in the murder of everyone left there.  I never got any details of how bad my mother’s life, may she rest in peace, was in that benighted little hamlet she left twenty or so years before it was wiped out by the Nazis.  You found out, through diligent research, that she used to whip me in the face from the time I could stand, so something that was done to her filled her with violent rage.   I appreciate the times you’ve said it’s a testament to my character that I never whipped you and your sister in the face, that it would have been understandable.  I did equally terrible things, we both know.

As for our almost forty year debate on whether people can or cannot fundamentally change their natures, I have a few things to say.  Problem one was our adversarial relationship, which largely foreclosed meaningful dialogue, and that was my fault.  I projected many things on you when you were a baby and it set things in a very bad cast.  I thought, for instance, that the way you stared at me from your crib next to the bed was accusatory.  I can see now that this was an insane point of view.  It came from my own carefully repressed terrors.  The world is full of terrors, especially if your caregiver was a violent enemy.  I have to apologize again, though I know you will say it’s not necessary.  So we have the adversarial relationship standing in the way of a real discussion, turning it into a black and white fight to the death.   The next problem is one of framing, the definitional problem.  How do we define meaningful change?  

It was your position that changing your outward behavior and reactions is a significant change for the better.  I always countered that you may change how you act, but never how you feel deep down while you are acting.  This is a clever debating tactic, perhaps, particularly if deployed with the skill I had to deploy such arguments, but beside the point, I can see now.  It also effectively ends discussion of the nature of meaningful change.  Of course how you react is significant, and changing your reactions is hard work.  Of course you will have the same feelings deep down.  Or maybe not.

I heard you say yesterday that the most recent troubled old friend you had to take your leave of (remember how you used to condemn me for casting people over the side?  I guess you understand now that it is sometimes necessary to do this) left you with different feelings than past leave takings.  You said you have no anger toward this person, just sadness.   That’s real progress, I think, on an inner feeling level, and I found it credible, too.  I salute you for this.  

The insight that you may have been left with a sixty pound boulder to push up the hill, difficult but possible, and your former friend a hundred pound one, difficult and impossible for a person to roll, is probably correct.  On many levels you continue to make progress, and on some fundamental levels she has made very little and is still very angry, critical and a bit ruthless– to herself and everyone else.

But the reason I set bone to paper today (no pen here in the grave, sad to say)– and I am conflicted about it now, is to address your feeling that I had changed on my deathbed, and so gave the final proof that people can change.  Deathbed conversions are a cliche, of course, and they are a cliche because they happen so often.  We are faced with the finality of death only once, no matter how many times we may fear it in our lives, when it actually approaches there is no mistaking it.  When the end is near nobody can predict how they might react.   Some see it as a blessing, and I have mixed feelings about that, although, to speak plainly, death has been pretty good for me.  It’s true my consciousness is a bit hard to express now, and I can’t guarantee further communications, or even the end of this one, but in some ways it’s not bad.  No worries, for one thing.

But anyway, what you saw as proof that I was capable of changing can be chalked up to the Grim Reaper grinning at me next to the bed.   Your sister was probably right– if I’d have known about the liver cancer six months earlier, as opposed to six days before I died, I probably would have still waited until that last night to tell you the things I finally told you.  Who knows?  Your construction is more generous, that I would have come to those final realizations much earlier, have lived those last months differently.  Due to the collective genius of Florida doctors we will never know.   Your manner was indeed different in that hospital room, and I have to admit, your kindness to me, the way you kept trying to let me off the hook as I was apologizing to you for the first and last time, may be seen as proof that you were right about people being able to change for the better.

I don’t bring this last point up to undermine the progress you have undoubtedly made, at least I don’t think I’m doing that.  It may be that we actually can’t change after all, though.  Maybe I will always have to undermine you, in some way.  

You told me, in the last real conversation we had, your last attempt to open a dialogue two years before I checked out, that my milder reactions to you had greatly improved our relationship, even if the inner feelings were the same.  That I respected your wish not to be constantly bad-mouthed, often in the guise of giving fatherly advice, meant a lot to you, you told me.  You offered this as proof that even I, someone who did not believe in change, could make changes.  

At the time desperation forced me to be cruel.  I actually laughed, scoffing at your naivete, telling you that my superficial change in reaction merely masked unchanged inner feelings.  I drove the nail in by adding that if I ever honestly told you what I really felt about you it would do irreparable damage to our relationship.  You could see that as just my desperation talking, and that would be fair, but I also didn’t have the insight to know any better.   Which is a deeply embarrassing thing to have to admit now, almost nine years after my death.

But the point is, what if my behavior on my deathbed, the way I expressed regret, wished I’d been able to change, see the world in all its nuance and not just as a black and white fight to the death, what if all that was just a show put on to give you a fonder last impression of me?  A manipulation orchestrated by Death, who was approaching on roller skates?  You see, this possibility would mean that I was right, our changes are only acts, and deep down we are the same as we always were.  Some things that torment you mean nothing to most people, it’s the way these things were instilled in you as a young child.  

On the other hand, my stepping out of character to seek forgiveness that last night could be seen as proof that you were right, that by changing our reactions we can change the dynamics that have trapped us unhappily in our lives.  That my relief at seeing you mild, and not angry or condemning me, as you had a right to as I went towards the grave, freed me to act differently.

This is one of those conversations that could go on, I suppose, though, in the ordinary course of things, if two people are not adversaries, certain agreements can be reached and the conversation need not be an ongoing battle over decades.  I still think about my wish, that last night, that we could have had the kind of real conversation fifteen years earlier that we finally had the last night of my life.  Fucking tragic, I know.

Sending A Bright Soul down into our world of Darkness

My friend the rabbi told a story at our friend’s funeral that explained our friend’s shortened life pretty well.   A rare and luminous soul is created in heaven and the angels stand around admiring its beauty.   As this is a rabbinic tale, there is immediately a dispute among them about the proper fate for this beautiful soul.

“This soul is too pure and perfect to be sent down into a world of darkness,” say a group of angels, “we must keep the soul here with us, where it will not be battered in the corrupt world below.”

Another group of angels petition God to send the soul down to earth, arguing that the light it will bring to the world of darkness is urgently needed.

God considers and explains that he indeed created the soul to spread light and love, and do good works, in the world below.   He decides that the soul will be born in an earthly body and live below in the world of troubles, to help refine the world through good deeds.  Reassuring the angels who want to keep the soul in heaven he adds “but his stay will not be long, since it will not take such a brilliant soul very long to complete his mission and he will be back here among us before you know it.”

The angels agree that every single day he is on earth, doing justly and spreading light, is a blessing.

As, indeed, is the case.

The Primary Feature of Depression

Crippling beyond all the other debilitating aspects of a depressed mood is the pervasive feeling of hopelessness.   Without hope, you know, might as well throw in the towel.  Things are horrible and there is no hope, no chance, of things ever getting better, in fact, they are getting noticeably worse.  The darkness is complete and there is no hope for another sunrise, though the sun might very well rise again the next morning.

Hope can be extinguished in different ways, but it is a regular and gigantic feature of depression.   Depression is said to be rage turned against the self, and I think it probably is.   If the self-rage is there, and fear, and loss of hope– and no gentleness in how you handle your disappointment or frustration– good luck to you, baby.  

False reason creeps in to justify the certainty of depression.  If I try this it will go badly, things will be even worse, what’s the point?  And truly, without hope there is no point to trying to do anything differently.

I remember this dilemma well, and without fondness.   Pain every day, all day, no reason but suffering.   Bunk dat, man.  No reason to punish yourself.  But learning how not to inflict that on yourself requires faith, which comes from hope.  No hope?  Good night.

More Framing

I have been corresponding with the widow of my recently departed friend.  It has been a small but tangible comfort to both of us.   I mentioned to a friend the role she seems to have played in reorganizing his friendships after they got married, helping to root out his long-time best friend and old friends like me.  I literally saw the man five or six times since his wedding close to 30 years ago.   It was not that I didn’t get along with the wife, I did, I remember her as gracious and hospitable the two times I visited them at home not long after their marriage.   That said, it seemed clear that she had other plans for his social life than getting to know and welcome his old friends.   This is not uncommon in married life, sadly enough.  My friend wrote back “she sounds like a real bitch.”  I wrote back “not anymore, if she ever was.”      

Shall I be angry, and sad, and lament all the music unplayed, the laughs unlaughed, the help I might have been able to give them during his long, terrible death?   Pointless, all of it.  There is plenty to be sad, angry and full of lamentation about, but how does it help anyone?   You know what helps?  Giving and taking comfort now.  It is all that remains to us that is useful and good after a rare disease mercilessly rips someone we love out of our lives.

Ahimsa is a struggle, no doubt about it

On the ahimsa front, it often seems like thankless work, except in looking back on how much worse it might have been without the attempt to stay mild.  

It is always better not to put the other person on the defensive.  Defensiveness makes a person prone to lash out, rattler-like, and catch you with a fang.  This, in turn, leads to the reflex to crush the serpent’s head, to their countermove, to your ass getting bitten again.  

So even if you kill the provoker, you need to get to the emergency room pronto, Tonto.  There is no winner in such a game, though it is played out countless times every minute around the world.

I am glad every time I’m able to avoid a confrontation with some asshole who desperately needs to have their ass kicked and their face shoved into it.  But it’s hard work, Brownie, for sure, and seems thankless much of the time.  It’s like water dripping and making an impression in stone, the progress imperceptible, except looking back over a long period of time.

That said, it may be the most valuable work we can do, for ourselves and for the world.

Cracked Vessels

We are sturdy and loyal, sometimes, and do each other great turns once in a while.   We are dependable, sometimes, when we are around, and attentive, and we can do a lot of good for each other with very little effort sometimes.   We will not always save your life at the moment you need it, necessarily, and we will die ourselves.  We do the best we can but we are cracked vessels.

An impatient, immature God, picking me up for some use, exclaims “cracked vessel!” and unhands me like I was a scalding hot tea cup with no handle, before I can burn the minor diety.

“You are a scalding hot tea cup with no handle,” Sekhnet pipes, like the constantly singing bird she is.    (“Oh, no,” thinks Sekhnet, “leave me out of your weird fantasy scape”)   I thnk of each one of them, each vessel I’d lift to my dry lips for a drink– cracked.  

Makes me love them no less, these old vessels, but at the same time it fills me with unspeakable sorrow.

A Question of Framing

Look at it this way: either she saved my life or almost fucking killed me.  Or both.  All a question of framing.

A friend had emailed me, just before we left snow covered NY heading for snow covered Boston for Melz’s funeral, urging us to be careful on the road.   I thought little of the warning at the time, seeing traffic on the Grand Central Parkway traveling at its normal speed and the service road dry, responded glibly that I’d ask the driver to keep it to 80 mph.
But, lo, only a few hours later, after a stop for lunch in a Connecticut diner, I had reason to ponder the prudence of his concerned comment  after S, at 80 mph and accelerating, hit a sheet of nicely camoflagued ice in the lane next to the HOV lane and did a donut next to said HOV lane on interstate 84, which is 5 lanes wide at that point, miraculously missing the white car in front of us as we swerved back into traffic, about a foot away as we went into the spin, we stopped for a nanosecond facing the oncoming traffic before S veered to miss one oncoming car, we swiveled again, maybe 180 degrees, somehow no horns blaring as this bullfight at 80 mph went on, no time for that, and then managed to lunge across the last two lanes of fast moving traffic to the shoulder.  Closest to death I’ve ever been.   Thank God none of the oncoming drivers were texting or studying their GPS screens at the time.  
 
S later told how her father, insane ex-Marine Murray, used to take S and her sister to frozen parking lots to practice over and over what to do when you accelerate and hit ice, how to get out of a skid, how to stay cool when you need to have every bit of focus on your survival.  He did this at least 10 times, til he was satisfied both girls could do it.  “We owe our lives to Murray,” I concluded.  There is no other explanation for how we survived.
 
On the way back I saw on southbound 84 that not only was it a miracle and testament to Murray’s effective training and S’s reflexes and instincts that we survived, and extreme good luck, the hand of Ha Shem, and Melz’s hand, but that S, in a hurry for no earthly reason, (we could arrive any time between 5 and 8 and she’d picked 5 to obsessively aim for– we arrived at 5:06), had been an insane idiot the moment before and, accelerating to illegally enter the HOV lane across an unmaintained lane (unmaintained because of double white lines and herringbones, under the thin coating of snow over a sheet of ice five miles long) at roughly 85 mph, had almost killed all of us.  
 
No wonder she was so shaken today and kept hugging me.  They left right after the burial, I drove back with other friends after the shiva call on Melz’s family.  It guess it must have dawned on her more and more overnight that it was not a case of “you saved my life. It’s a miracle!” as I had constantly been framing it, nearly as much as “you almost killed me on the way to a funeral, you fucking asshole!” which is probably a much more accurate assessment of what actually happened.  
It is all a question of framing, I suppose, and how much mercy we employ while putting things into frames.

Tucking Melz In

At the cemetery, which was called a burial park, and looked like a snow-covered golf course, we walked across the graves and their snow-covered plaques marking where the dead were buried — no headstones here — toward the rectangular cut out of earth where our friend’s pine coffin would be buried.   The day, which had been sunny and almost Springlike during the perfect funeral service, had turned grey and the temperature dropped at least 15 degrees.  Collars went up, hats were pulled down, gloves came out.

After shoveling some dirt to finish covering the pine top of Melz’s pine coffin, I spotted  a very successful friend of the deceased.  The young Melz had dreamed of being Fellini, and was in a way, he had a video company and directed and edited short films for business that I’m sure were artful.  He was a very talented  and tasteful guy.   Melz’s friend and colleague who waved to me as I turned from the grave must be talented too, he sold his first great idea for several million dollars, I learned recently.

He and his wife smiled as I made my way over to them.   We spoke briefly about the miraculous perfect game pitched by our mutual friend the rabbi as he sent off his best friend from childhood.   81 pitches, all strikes, 27 Ks.  Nobody has ever painted a masterpiece in fewer strokes, every color and gradation perfect, unforgettable and untouchable in its architecture and balance.

“If he dies before us, who’s going to do our funerals?” he asked, puckish and urgent. 

“Shit,” I said, “you’re right, we’d be fucked.”   Then in an inspiration as sudden as one of Melz’s ridiculous absurdities thrown into the conversation, I said, “wait, I’ve got it, and you’re just the man for the job.  We get Sokoll on tape doing our eulogies. We get final cut, so we can tweak him until it’s perfect… it’ll be great.  I’ll send you my eulogy right away so you can get to work.”

Later, when we presented our concerns, our friend the rabbi promised us he’d do his best to outlive us so he could do our funerals live.

“Let’s go tuck Melz in,” said his wife gently after a round of smiles.  

We walked over to the grave and continued shoveling, burying the pine box that contained the used up shell of the body that once housed our friend.  There was odd comfort in this tucking of Melz in, and I took some more of it, a second round of shoveling, trying to fill the rest of the hole.