CUR

Something about self awareness, the understanding that I am uniquely me, that my molecules are programmed like no other person, that my thoughts are mine alone. Self aware, I come to the grim truth that I am trapped inside my own head. My siblings and cohorts, anybody, everyone; we can rub shoulders, make eye contact and tell our story but it all comes out in words and phrases that require interpretation. We make sense from story by measuring it against our own story, the one we experienced first hand, that does not need words. I can write a book about the way I feel when I smell cherry blossoms and when someone betrays my trust but all you get are words. Language is a driving force in our evolution but it has limitations. Words can not express completely, exactly how I feel or the way I perceive a late summer sunset on Lake Michigan. We can come close but in the end it’s as much about the listener as the teller. I glean as much as possible from your words but then you are trapped within your mind as surely as I am trapped inside of mine. 

Whether or not you think about or even sense that level of isolation; it exists. I believe we have evolved mind sets that help us ease the anxiety that mars self awareness. That’s how evolution works. For some of my friends, this would be the segue to God, religion and our need to defuse that fear but I rode that goat as long and as far as I could. It’s another human construct, an extrapolation of identity. Abraham Maslow was a 20th Century Psychologist who framed what is universally accepted in his, ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. He surmised that in order to address higher level needs, fundamental needs must be satisfied first. First are biological needs, air, then security needs, safety, and then to belonging. Humans are social, always have been. We can’t survive as a species living independently. From the family unit to the clan, to tribe and nation, we band together. Our survival is intrinsically tethered to the need to belong, to be loved, appreciated and valued. 

Once met, Maslow says we can recognize the need for esteem and then self actualization but I’m hung up on the belonging. I can be safe and you can be secure but there is no ‘We’ until we identify with each other. There’s no way to feel good about the self until our peers approve. It’s how we fit into our culture. It’s the niche we carve out, or has been reserved for us where we are accepted and valued. We Belong there. Inclusion provides enough commonality that we recognize each other, but we still sniff buts to be sure and mark our territory. ‘Hey, it’s just me and you know I’m alright.’ That is at the bottom of all identity. Sometimes I struggle with identity, wanting to know more about what I am, who I am and what that all means.

I have Cajun friends from the Gulf Coast who know their pedigree and legacy back 14-15 generations. It’s a tight, well defined identity that leaves no doubt about who belongs and who doesn’t. Language, religion, custom, music, cuisine and tradition, they are an uncommon people. I love their culture but it belongs to them; all I can do is look in from the outside and share what they are willing to share. I love them but have no desire to be one of them. To be steeped in that legacy would consume me and I’m not ready to hang on one hook forever. Likewise Native Americans; I have wonderful friends who cling to their aboriginal link, still moving to the rhythm of the drum, honoring the Mystery and the medicine wheel. I lean on them to learn more, to appreciate their connection to Mother Earth but I would not be Native American, for the same reason I don’t want to be Cajun. I could turn to some ideology, some ‘Ism’ to access the ‘We’ but they are not the means to an end as they would suggest, at the end of the day the ideology becomes the end.

Still I feel the tug of a distant, long removed clan or tribe pulling at my need to belong. It comes at me through my feelings which I have little or no control over and to some extent through logic and reason. I like to believe I have the handle on logic and reason but I must challenge my beliefs as much as the things I reject. You have to do that or become one of the sheeple with noses tucked under the next sheep's tail. I realize the way I feel about logic and reason is more powerful than reason itself. Still the question begs, who am I? My pedigree branches off in all directions, so much so that I can’t find a common source. There are British and Celtic threads in the fabric and rumor of some French but looking back over ten generations it leaves a thousand possibilities. 

Molly O’Day was Orange Irish, my great grandmother; loyal to the Crown but Irish none the less. In the family she is remembered as the most fractious, quarrelsome, bat-tempered woman on earth. She singlehandedly drove my grandparents to divorce, leaving my father to be raised by foster parents. I’d say she had at least a distant, removed effect on me and my journey. On my mother’s side, the name Porter is English as can be. Several Porters’ were Presbyterian preachers from New England, Harvard no less. By the time Porter genes got down to her, my mother was the second child of seven, to a ne’er do well rounder and his sickly wife Lottie Wood, just as English. The Stevens’ were Welsh coal miners, by way of Canada in the early 1800’s, matriculated down to Cincinnati, OH, to central Iowa and finally to southwestern Missouri. For the most part they were farmers and store keepers. 

So, how am I obliged to a tradition of sniffing butts and marking territory ? My logical side doesn’t care because that was then and this is now, still the need to belong is waiting for an answer. I don’t have one but when I do it will be about half breeds and nonconformists. Freedom from prejudices of a dead and gone generation is empowering. What has funneled down to me is not the legacy of religion or politics, music or food; I just know that you be there for family; be the push or the pull, the lift up or the sit down they need, when they need. You do the same for your outlaw relations, the ones who slipped in the back door. They’re not like blood, with blood you take what you get. You get to choose your outlaws. I am a mutt, my pedigree doesn’t go anywhere and the tradition that resonates with me is about; breathe in, breathe out, move on. ‘Jimmy Buffett’. Evidently I'm doing alright with identity and the rest of my hierarchy, I've been playing with around here at the top for some time.

FOUR FEET HIGH & RISING

There is an old, Johnny Cash song about relentless rain and rising flood water; ‘Four Feet High & Rising.’ I liked it then, I like it now. In his liner notes he alluded to a life lesson he learned early about adversity. The flood stressed out the family and the farm with damage to the buildings and loss of crops. But floods have a way of replenishing the land with new sediment and nutrients; they had the best crops ever the next year. ‘Four Feet High & Rising’, the unavoidable metaphor is about growing, coming out on the other end of adversity. The irony here is that the obvious often gives way to the dubious. As much as I like the song, the hook reminds me of crazy days in the army. In 1960-61 I was a parachute rigger assigned to Supply Company, 2/503 Battle Group, Sukiran, Okinawa. There must have been 45-50 riggers, our platoon sergeant’s name was James Crow, from Alabama. Can you believe it, Jim Crow? 

In peacetime you train for war but without an imminent threat, we were a pretty laid back collection. Leadership consisted of leftovers from the Korean conflict and WW2, waiting for the next war to come along. Not much in the way of promotion when there is no fighting. The lower enlisted ranks were draftees and kids who had nothing better to do than a tour in the army. There was an unwritten attitude that went, ‘The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary.’ Sergeant First Class Crow, probably 40, on a good day standing tall was a stocky 5’4” with a buzz haircut and beady eyes. He never showed interest in me and I liked it that way. His undivided attention was fixed on looking good in the eyes of our platoon leader, 1st Lieutenant Russell and our company commander, Captain Swank. He wanted very much to get another strip on his sleeve, to make master sergeant. In the privacy of our own company, low rank enlisted called him, ‘Four Feet High & Rising’. 

By the time we got to Okinawa in 1960 we had all been in long enough to know if it was a career option or not. If you considered it, doing a good job wasn’t enough, you had to suck up. Sgt. Crow had a bit of swagger and spoke with an air of self indulging arrogance. I was impressed with two phrases that he used frequently. There I was a barely graduated high schooler with no pretense of academic interest but I listened well. The language you use is a pretty good measure of your smarts. When he didn’t want to approve or disapprove of someone’s something he meant to say, “That’s your prerogative.” But it came out with a raspy Alabama accent, “That’s your pragative.” Pragative, it got to where I could anticipate it. In formation, his captive audience, any time of day, he would give us advice or options and follow with his “pragative” jewel. When he was upset with people who complained or worried about what someone else might do, he used his best, forward leaning, head bobbing put down, with perfect diction; “I could ‘#!!*^#’ care less about . . .” The ‘care less’ was always preceded by an unfettered explicative and every time I wondered, ‘If he could care less, that means he must care to begin with.’ Me, I couldn’t care less, I didn’t care at all. But nobody answered to me and my disposition was of no consequence. 

Forty days before I was scheduled to fly stateside and be separated from the service, Sgt. Crow called me out of formation, shook my hand and announced that I had been promoted to Specialist 4th Class. Then he recommended me for reenlistment. A couple of days later when I reported to the Battle Group reenlistment officer for my pre-separation interview, he noticed that I still had PFC stripes. I side stepped his probes about my intentions to reenlist, saying I hadn't decided  yet and he sent me back to the company. As I walked into the parachute loft Sgt. Crow yelled at me across the room, “Stevens, if you don’t have your rank on your sleeve tomorrow I’ll take it away from you.” Funny how your own news gets home before you do. So I sewed some old Sp4 patches on my sleeves that night. 

That jacket survived years of neglect in one trunk or another, only to resurface when I moved or threw out clothes that no longer served a purpose. I found it again the other day. I can’t say that I couldn’t care less, it served me through the speed bumps and near missis of my youth and I remember the lessons I learned from the incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary. Five short years later they got their war and their promotions. I was preoccupied with biology and philosophy classes, football practice and with some luck a chance to get in the game on Saturday.

How high’s the water mama,

Four feet high and rising.

Well the rails are washed out north of town,

We’ve got to head for higher ground.

We can’t come back til the water comes down,

Four feet high and rising. 

CHECK CHECK, 3-86 Y

Back in early June I wrote a piece about 17-year cicadas. They had a big turnout this year and the tree limbs were covered with abandoned exoskeletons. They had been living happily underground as grubs all those years and what do you know, they all decided to go topside, crawl up a tree and split their seams. Once out of the old attire they spread their wings and began singing. It was awesome. Now it’s mid August and the 13-year brood is doing their thing. They were all over the low hanging branches of my Cypress tree. I gave up on my insect collection about the time my twins were born, 1971. I have no place to keep them but the shells must be good for something. I collected a bunch and brought them inside, counted them; 17 cicada shells. ‘That’s almost enough for a football game’ I thought. So I went back out and got five more. A piece of felt on the kitchen table, it wasn’t green but it was a place to play. I lined up an offense and a defense, their claws stuck in the felt and they stood there like they were waiting for somebody to call a play. There was no way to get them moving, those brittle legs would break off and then they wouldn’t be good for anything. 

There is no substitute for imagination. When my kids were little they made believe a walnut was a car and pushed it around the roots of a tree, making motor sounds and screeched tires when they slid to a stop. They set up clothes pin soldiers on the table and shot them with rubber bands. I can do that, they had to get it from somewhere. So I set the defense and called a play, a sweep to the wide side of the table, The cicadas had all the plays memorized. Then, at the line, I looked at the defense and changed the play; Check-Check, 3-86 Y; that’s a pass to the tight end. The center hiked the ball and all 22 cicadas started bumping into each other; my QB dropped back to pass. The TE caught the ball for an 11 yard gain, all in my mind of course. After about five or six plays I decided I was too old to be doing this; after so many years imagination loses some of its edge and you start thinking about something else, like throwing stones at squirrels or checking the cookie jar. 

I’ll be up early tomorrow, in the pool at 5:30. When I get home I’ll be hungry but I’ll have to clean up the mess on the table before I can eat and I’ll have another laugh from all of my silliness. But I do love cicadas, just the idea that they spend all that time in the dirty dark and come out for just a day or two, to fly off, sing their Ree-ah Ree-ah Ree-ah songs and make some whoopee. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love,{Ella Fitzgerald}. She knew exactly; I’d sing too.

ALL ABOUT ME

This blog is about me, what I do and where I go, what gets my attention, what I think and how I feel. I realize that my take on this journey is nothing more than what it is, just me, and I write to understand as much as to be understood. So when I stray off the beaten path it shouldn’t surprise anyone. I remember Andy Rooney from the TV program, ’60 Minutes’. His little rants and sidebars took us places we didn’t expect to go, maybe didn’t even want to go but you knew he had done his homework and he pursued his purpose rightously. I aspire to be like Andy. Now that I think about it, I’ve never been able to zero in on a personal hero of my own. I admire many characters but not as heroes. Joseph Campbell, ‘Hero With A Thousand Faces’ profiles the nature and evolution of the Hero.  I have a storyteller friend in Dallas, TX who seethes with scorn for Campbell and his hero talk. She does so because in all of his writing he alludes to the hero in masculine terms. I will forgive him that transgression seeing he was a mid 20th century scholar and masculine was the norm. History hasn't cast many women as heroes but you can’t judge history by today’s standard, not fairly anyway.

Campbell’s hero, usually a warrior, would of necessity trek off into the world and experience life changing events. Learning lessons that could only be learned out there on the edge, he would return a changed man with attributes that set him apart from other, lesser men. Heroes were revered at large, legends in their own time. Late in life, regarding gender issues, Campbell agreed enthusiastically that gender had no role in the hero's journey. His point, ultimately, was that we all experience the hero’s journey, one way or another. In the end he observes that; ". . . we can not cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy." The nature of one’s journey is all important but the measure of the hero is who pays attention and is he/she revered. Pacifist’s who harbored and protected Jews during the holocaust were as heroic as warriors who waged blood and thunder but their courage and deeds were not publicized. 

It’s normal growing up with role models we admire and aspire to be like. Whether or not they made the hero’s journey is of little concern to a naive kid. All you need to impress and influence a teenager is to be relatively successful at something and to be cool. One of my early heroes, if you will, was Mickey Mantle, ‘The Mic’, pride of the New York Yankees. But for all of his talent, fame and fortune he died tragically, a model for what not to do. 

Now that I think about it, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) would rank high on my ‘Hero’ list. I love his quotes; he was relatively successful I’d say, and I think he is absolutely cool. His journey left him with a rare mix of skepticism and humor. “There is no sadder thing than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.” I take that to mean, life is cruel and if you’re lucky, you learn to squeeze out the joy, like juice from a green lemon. He also remarked, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” How do you embellish that little gem? That’s it for me for today. You can have all of your politicians and warriors, your athletes and your tycoons; they fall short, leaving me disappointed, still searching for a hero worthy of Rooney and Clemens. They will have to do until I find someone, alive hopefully, who can add to the shadow they cast. 

THAT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY

My dad wanted to help me with my homework but he wouldn’t do it for me. Long division wasn’t all that hard; you borrow when you need to and carry, then transpose to the right as you subtract. I thought to myself, ‘That’s easy for you to say.’ I would not say so out loud. He would get mad and either yell at me or leave me to do for myself and I wasn’t getting anywhere by myself. It’s an expression I heard a teacher say to another teacher and it sounded so cool, “That’s easy for you to say.” I understood perfectly. Just because you know how doesn’t mean that I do. I can do long division now but it’s still pretty mysterious.  

I was traveling with a lady I know, to a place neither of us had ever been before. I was driving, handed her the map and asked how far to the next town. She studied the map for several minutes and replied, “I don’t know.” I told her, “We just went through Cadillac, headed west.” She studied some more and put the map down, aware that I was waiting for her answer. She said, “I still don’t know.” Then I realized that she didn’t know how to orient or read a map. As I kept my eyes on the road I gave her a crash course in maps, told her to turn it so all the words were right side up. She did that. I asked if she understood floor plans to a house. She did. I went on; “It’s like a floor plan for a state except the lines are not walls between rooms, they are roads between towns and cities. North is always at the top, east to the right and so on.” With a glance I saw that her head was nodding an affirmation. “Check the road leading west out of Cadillac and find the next town, then use the scale at the bottom of the map to gauge the distance.”  She folded the map and handed it back to me along with, “That’s easy for you to say.” She graduated Magna Cum Laude from university and my expectations were overestimated. I stopped the car, glanced at the map and drove again. She apologized, I told her, “No problem.” How does anybody grow up and not know what to do with a map? I don’t know but obviously it’s a skill set that you don’t need to graduate with honors. 

I don’t think of myself as a traveler, more of a ‘Keep moving but don’t go homer.’ Over coffee with friends and a few other nice people, don’t know them well enough to consider them friends; we were comparing notes on foreign countries. I had spent a fall and winter in Patagonia and a few years later, a summer and fall in Canada. My friends on their travels hung out with other tourists and followed itineraries, I hung out with locals and explored. Later a man I didn’t know very well pulled me aside and ask, “How do you do that?” I said, “It’s easy, you pack some things, get a ticket and don’t look back.” The pause and the look on his face told me that I didn’t really understand his question or he thought I was having fun at his expense. Unspoken, the message was universal, “That’s easy for you to say.”

My next, ‘Un-coming home’ will take about a month, through the Grand Canyon, visit friends on the west coast and try to capture quality photographs, wherever they may find me. Sooner or later I’ll end up where I started and that will be alright too. It’s a nice mantra; Wherever you go, there you are, and that’s easy for me to say.