Category Archives: personal

Ahimsa’s all well and good

First do no harm, a very good place to start.  If I can’t help, I don’t hurt.   I do kill cockroaches when I see them, but I do it exactly the way I want to go– fast, in one blow, a certain death, no lingering in agony, even for a second.  I am a bit embarrassed to say I often apologize to the individual as I wipe him or her out.  It’s not their fault they are loathsome insects or that I can’t tolerate them near my kitchen sink.

Gentle is the goal, I tell myself.  I do not want to use the powers, already sharpened and ready inside me, to strike at people who do me wrong.  I want to give them a chance to do right, and, if they don’t, I want to leave without looking back.  I don’t need the last word, I just need to be away from toxic types.

But here’s the thing, sometimes these toxic types keep screaming for a showdown.   They can be very demanding and unreasonable about such things.  They provoke once, and if you let it go, they get furious and dial up the provocation the next time.  Over time they will find a way to set up the showdown they’re looking for, or die trying.   They have this wild west mentality, they want to be the fastest gun and they want a damn shootout to prove that they, and not you, are the baddest killer around.  

I don’t want to have to knock any of these toxic sociopath zombies out anymore.  There’s nothing in it for anybody.  First do no harm, and lastly, do no harm.  Amen.

“So, do you think you’ll ever work things out with X?”

I don’t think so, I told him, because I realize now that we brought out the worst in each other.  I was the worst I’ve ever been and he couldn’t do any better.  It was a long goodbye, and I tried my best to make things better, but in the end I didn’t see another way.

Said without defensiveness, because, finally, I understand that we can only proceed with good faith.  I’m not playing games or trying to win contests, I am in this to be interactive, to create things with people who want to play.   Whatever the world may say about that is really not my concern any more.  Trying to play with unhappy critics is not fun.  I need to play with people who just love to play.

My goal is to be present, direct, and as good as I can be.  People I have to be polite around I’ll be polite around until I can get away from them.  People I can be creative with are the ones I’m looking for now, not people who test my abilities as an improvisational actor by insisting I pretend that a bowl of moldering snot is actually a tasty dip.

The Internalized Victimizer

He drew himself a line in the sand and dared himself to cross it.  “Do it, this time, you fucking loser,” he snarled as his toe dug the line.  He couldn’t cross the line he dared himself to cross.  He stared at it, finally drew himself back and cried.  “The same old story,” he said to himself, “the eternal fucking loser…” and he struck himself about the face and head, and cried some more.

That voice was not his voice, not the voice he hears paddling his kayak or gliding on the back of Lew’s glider at 5,000 feet, or even rolling on his bike, the autumn night damp against his face.  The voice he hears when he is soaring is not that punishing, unremitting voice.  That sour voice belongs to the internalized victimizer.  Spit that shit out, man, it’s no good for you.  

Heed the words of your favorite preacher, for God’s sake.

Bitterness vs. Generativity

According to Erik Erikson the final stage of human life is marked by stagnation and bitterness or continued growth and a giving back that brings a kind of fulfillment.   As I have entered this last quarter of my life I opt for continuing to grow and become a force for hope, compassion and creativity, rather than a bitter old bastard.

I am, however, at the moment, one bitter old bastard.  It is a surprisingly bitter battle not to become bitter.  If friends toast my “success” without even asking how things went the other day in the first actual workshop, it is merely the way of the world and I should not linger on any darker feelings it may raise.

So I take this moment to express my gratitude for the hope I possess, in spite of myself, in the face of almost unanimous indifference, that I will continue to learn and grow and help others do the same.  

These tiny steps I take with the candle, cupping my hand around its small flame as the bitter winds whip the darkness all around, I am very grateful for them.  Each heavy-legged step is a step away from bitterness and toward the light.

Even Dreams are Telling Me The Same Thing

It is horrible to find yourself judging your friends.  The world is cold enough without doubting those nearest and dearest to you.   America believes in the myth of the Rugged Individualist, the one who creates an empire out of a single apple and who doesn’t need anything but guts and relentless hard work.  It just never occurred to me that I might someday have to become that mythical figure (one that never truly existed, by the way) to succeed in the alternate form of success I am pursuing.

The painful truth is that I may have reached the crossroads in my life where the friends I have truly cannot understand what I am trying to do, can relate to it only intellectually, if at all.  If I was pursuing monetary success it would make much more sense to them than this odd mission I seem to be on, a man too lazy to acquire any kind of material wealth or comfort, a little scornful to boot, smugly superior in his quixotic charitable pursuit.   I find myself alone in the ways that matter most and it may be that I’ll have to find my new way with a new group of companions, people I’ve yet to meet.  The odd phrase from the New Testament rings in my head “let the dead bury themselves”.  My dreams are telling me the same thing.

In the dream last night I was literally left stranded by the highway, far from home in the darkness of a rural night.  Three cars filled with several of my oldest friends had taken off without me.  I’d been left because, without explanation, I’d stolen two or three minutes to pop into the rental car of a friend from out of state who, in real life, I have started consulting with about the nonprofit.  His car was last in a line of three or four cars that all did u-turns to take off up the nearby highway ramp without me, a moment before my friend said goodnight and drove off to his hotel in the rent-a-car.  

In the dream I called one friend driving off who cooly told me his coordinates on the map and his merciless wake up hour for work the next day, by way of answering my “where are you?”.  In the dream I exploded in a way I have not in waking life in many years “dick move, asshole!” I yelled into the phone before hanging up and trying to figure out how to get home from this distant town in the middle of the night, or at least find shelter until morning. 

This kind of hilarious practical joke by close friends reminded me of the day several of us biked the Five Borough Bike Tour with tens of thousands of others and the two friends I was separated from didn’t stop at any one of the four or five obvious places to wait for me.  I rode about ten miles in the throng of pedaling strangers and eventually found them at the next rest stop.   They had all rested and were ready to move on by the time I caught up.  I was trying to get sunscreen that stung like mace out of my eyes with bottled water.  Another guy from the group and I wound up racing on the Belt Parkway to try to catch up to the other three an hour or two later.  This was the first year a macho friend rode with us, and evidently she was intent on competing in this leisurely ride.

Twenty miles later, after riding hard most of the day to catch up to friends who seemingly didn’t take a moment to think of me behind them, struggling to catch up, I finally decided to call it quits.   I took a nap under a shady tree in a park by the Verrazano Bridge, rolled over in the cool grass and crushed the screen of my new Motorola Razr.  I biked to the nearest subway and went home.  The next day I flew to Florida again.  Two weeks later my mother was dead.

A Novel I’d like to write

The protagonist would be a man who, though gentle, truly did not give a rat’s ass.  One of the many annoyances that did not trouble him at all would be the silence of those who knew of his sensitivity to silence.  

This would be most vividly seen in the memorable vignette where he blissfully goes about his gentle business while, all around, those closest to him, intractably attracted to their own mothers, are busily having enthusiastic sex with them.

The Right to Rage

You have the right to rage, but there is a price you must be willing to pay.  You might think the rage itself is price enough, but you would be fucking wrong.

A mother, say, may rage at her child.   In the moment nobody is fast enough or strong enough to prevent the attack, certainly not the kid.   The enraged woman might have a right to her rage, a lawyer could argue, but if she takes a bottle and skulls her kid she has a right to be taken to the police station and sent over to the Laughing Academy for observation.

My father had been treated to this kind of tough love as a very young boy.  This kind of tough love may be more properly called hatred.  It leaves only betrayal and rage behind in the child who, instead of being protected by his mother, was beaten by her.  “A face only a mother could love,” has a bitter ring to someone who was brutalized by his own mother.

My father, to his credit, rarely lashed out with his hands to hit my sister and me.  It was the tongue, sharp as a bullwhip, that he lashed out with.  I won’t describe the torrent of hate speech that often foamed out of his mouth.  I understand it now, but, shit…

It is not unusual for children, watching one parent rage and the other cower, to make the obvious mistake:  the raging one is strong, the cowering one weak.  It is not weakness to cower and not strength to scream and threaten, or lash out.   I’ve seen many situations where a kid winds up emulating the style of the parent they identify as strong.   These situations are always sickening.

My father was very smart, and a gifted arguer.  He taught me the Socratic Method years before I heard of it.  A series of logical questions, with answers beyond dispute, leading to a conclusion, also beyond dispute.  I did some ju-jitsu on him one day on line at a wedding buffet in a bistro on Metropolitan Avenue.

“You’ve said many times that physical violence and verbal violence are exactly the same in the harm they do to the victim,” I said, piling some shrimp on my plate.

“Yes,” he said, swallowing, dignified, ready to rumble.  He already knew where we were going.

“So all the verbal violence around the kitchen table directed at A___ and me was the same as if you’d been beating on us?”  I asked, pulling a celery heart out of ice.

“That’s right,” he said, not avoiding it now.

“So would you say A___ and I were victims of child abuse?” I asked him, moving the Queen behind the Rook, and the celery heart behind the shrimp.

“Yes,” he said, “I would have to say that you were.”

The thing I remember most about this exchange, which took place more than twenty years ago, is the angry look my sister shot me over the old man’s shoulder.  She was mad on his behalf, her identification with the strong parent was greater than her realization of the damage he’d done to her.

You have the right to rage, everyone does.  But for the love of God, don’t do it.

Hopped Up, Exhausted, Immobile

Yes, I’ve been hopped up lately.  Thinking of my mother’s life and death a lot as the apartment where I spent time with her the last twenty years was sold yesterday.  Excited about the workshop with the nine kids grades 2-5 that will begin a week from yesterday.  Hopped up about the state of this apartment, which has been this way for a long time and needs to be fixed up.   Hopped up that I am drawing the same picture over and over, reading, emailing, reading, listlessly surfing the internet, drawing the same picture.  All around, the chaos I would tame, looking on mockingly.

Exhausted, truly.  Eyes tired all the time, reading a novel in too fine print, staring at this screen for hours at a time.   I can’t look away, even to make a long overdue appointment with the eye doctor.  Too many details to take care of lately, too many things on my mind.  Tired, yet unable to sleep for ten hours or however long it would take to not be so tired.  The picture I keep drawing finally tells me to stop it.

Image

Immobile, drawing the same picture over and over, staring at the computer screen.  Thinking.  “Stop thinking so much,” says Sekhnet, echoing the voice from Ecclesiastes “For in much wisdom, there is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow” Ecclesiastes 1:18.  But I can’t help it, Ecclesiastes, old boy, not to say there is much wisdom in my vexation, nor agreeing that increasing knowledge necessarily increaseth sorrow, you know, I’m just sayin’.

Saw a Ted Talk by a man named Sugata Mitra, whose research shows the power of groups of poorly educated children to learn and teach each other what they are motivated to learn (watch it here, I recommend it). He concludes that “values are acquired, doctrine and dogma are imposed.”  This is a very deep conclusion, if you ask me, comes close to the core of what’s wrong with the world we live in.  

He also concludes, as I do, that “learning is a self-organising system” (he spells ‘organizing’ like a former subject of the British Empire).  In other words, individuals and non-hierarchical groups can learn what they need to learn in an organic kind of way that reveals itself as it goes.  I’m in the process of trying to prove these very things, even as I can’t clear off my kitchen table or desk.

So the mind doesn’t stop thinking and the body doesn’t start doing, except to dance here on the keyboard, eight fingered, with the right thumb playing bass on the space bar.  I’d be better off sitting at a piano keyboard, or playing a guitar with eight fingers.  But even that wearieth me, man.

Why am I not going to sleep?  Most people in my time zone are having some serious REM sleep about now, dreaming.

It’s me, I think

I woke up in a room piled high with clothes on one side, random unused items carpeting the floor, a cracked wall and peeling ceiling, a Sony Trinitron and VCR un-used for perhaps a decade.  The clothes I’d put in a black contractor bag after the fire in the apartment downstairs were still there, in front of the blankets piled haphazardly on the trunk of drawing books.  My beloved Oinsketta had been alive during the fire, I rushed her and her tiny lungs out into the street.  It was probably a year before September 11th became a day of infamy.

“That bag of toxic, smoky clothes has been there for more than ten years,” a voice said indignantly.  And it’s true.

I woke up realizing it’s probably me, not the other maniacs I know, who is closest to being a kind of crazy.  Everyone I know carries their collected wounds, scars and disabilities, but not everyone does it so stylishly.

Awe

The blackness of the night, stretching over the world.  For each candle, a gust of wind.  Childish, this fear of the darkness, but it waits there at the end.  A terror as big as God.

“I’m wondering what’s gonna be,” says the old woman, her body already 90% devoured.  A few days later her eyes are only blacks, glittering like fire.  Then I am at her funeral.

A soul burns in the night, feverish, shivering like a young animal first smelling the end.