HE IS RISIN

Easter is not my favorite holiday, not by a long shot. But I like spring time and I like what goes with it. Long ago when I first signed onto Face Book, when I only had a dozen friends and they were all family; a guy who grew up with my kids friended me so I clicked on ‘accept’ and grew my list of friends to 13. Come Easter, he posted an all-Caps exhortation that; “HE IS RISEN’, followed by his own personal-revelation-witness that after all, God is good. I don’t remember him as being particularly religious but then he married a holy-moly wife and that can make a good guy go weird. That was my best guess anyway and I unfriended him. 

I belong to a church where tolerance isn’t enough. You can tolerate bad breath and bad manners but they still suck. My church says, “accept people as they are.” You don’t have to agree with their propaganda but you understand they are doing the best they can. If you want to grow you have to be willing to be uncomfortable, so you accept. It goes without saying that you challenge everything, even what you understand and believe. Challenge doesn't mean reject or dismiss, it means engage. In my religion, all religion is metaphor and you understand; your prayers go out unaddressed. It is natural as rain and rational as cooperation; what we can neither deny nor understand, we create stories to make it digestible. Metaphor! It’s how the brain facilitates the mind. Knowledge isn’t enough; faith isn’t enough. It’s how we juggle all the balls in our experience, the joy of life with the anguish of mortality.

Maybe I shouldn’t have unfriended the guy, he was just sharing what makes him feel complete. But that day, it was too much for me and we never were really friends. My Belief system tells me that religion is hard wired into the neural network. It’s like radar, always looking for a contact that may or may not be there. I don’t tolerate religion, I embrace it. Nothing is more human. I can wrap both my head and my heart around Islam and Hinduism, around Buddha and Judaism, around Catholic and Evangelical. My religion tells me all religion has at least something to serve the greater good and that any religion can be exploited to an unholy purpose. But if it’s what one needs then they should have it; like a drug to ease pain and calm the spirit, maybe even a touch of euphoria. But if you want me to go there with you on Face Book, forget it. 

200

 

On September 16, 2012 I hit the ‘Publish’ button and posted the first piece to go into this blog. I was in Nova Scotia taking photographs at Peggy’s Cove. Looking back, it was a wonderful day and the piece I wrote still feels good. The photo I posted was a great shot but after many reviews, there is another one that I like more. It was from farther away and as luck would have it, the sun came out for just a short minute and the first light popped against the white paint on the lighthouse. I hung an art show of my photographs last year and the Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse was well received, one of the better pieces. Collectors were interested and several had been there, had similar photos of their own. I’m glad it didn’t sell as I enjoy it daily on my living room wall. 

That was the first ‘Stones In The Road’ post and this one toady will make 200. Thinking about creating blog posts, this 200th piece is sort of a milestone. I thought the same thing about 100. It occurred to me then something like in Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hansel and Gretel dropping crumbs along the path as they went deeper into the woods. Their trail of crumbs was a futile effort to return by the same way. I on the other hand, have no intention of retracing my steps. My crumb trail is little more than graffiti, on the chance someone will notice and sample it. If I were selling subscriptions it would be a total bust but it gives me reason to write. Sometimes I have something to say and other times I just need to process. In James Taylor’s, ‘Rockabye Sweet Baby James’ he aludes to the future and to his journey with the line; “There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway, a song that they sing when they take to the sea; a song that they sing of their home in the sky, maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep. The singing works just fine for me.” So it is, the writing works just fine for me. 

There is a point in time when a good idea transends and becomes a plan. I’m just about there. I want to go back to Nova Scotia this summer. I have an invitation, a sofa to sleep on and I won’t have to learn a new landscape. If I can manage it for sure, I’ll go back to Peggy’s Cove. Maybe I'm more like Hansel & Gretel than I thought. I can follow my blog posts all the way back; I’ll take photographs in the first light, eat fish cakes and beans for breakfast like everyone else and I will write about it. 

EARLY BIRD

I came and went all day yesterday, swimming early, returning a computer monitor for a refund then to a computer class across town. Changed from the car to pickup and picked up my power-washer at the small engine repair shop; my day was like riding a yoyo. It was when afternoon and evening found each other, I sat down and closed my eyes. When I opened them, even if it was only for a couple of minutes, I knew I had been off the grid. In the kitchen, the counter top was screaming, “Put stuff away and clean me.” Dusty window sills and picture frames were screaming too. Jackets and sweat shirts on the backs of chairs wanted to be hung up and they were yelling at me. The carpet chimed in, “Run the sweeper before I choke.” In the bedroom it was like a pen full of barking dogs. I thought to myself, ‘Where do I start?’ 

Then out of the ‘blue’, the voice of that 11-year old who lives inside my head, the one who gives me unsolicited advice and mocks my intelligence; he says, “Let’s get out of here.” So, how can you argue with that? I’d been running all day, why stop now? Earlier, on the radio, I heard a public service announcement for family night at the Plaza Branch Library. At 6:30 they were having a magician. I hadn’t seen live, up closer magic in a long time so I dug out my keys, fished a jacket off the back of a chair and headed out. I arrived a half hour early, not thinking of course. I wanted a good, front row seat. Normally you arrive early to get a good seat but no parent or grandparent wants to sit with little kids, with nothing to entertain them for any length of time. I was the only early bird. 

I chose a seat on the far-right front row. At about 6:20, they all swooped in like starlings on my bird feeder. A lady sat down, leaving an empty seat between us. She was grandmother-ish with a 6-ish boy in tow. She wore an old, out of style, camouflage jacket. Her hair wasn’t really red, it was dyed vermillion, pulled up on top of her head with a rubber band. The boy was excited and they talked. She asked questions that made him think and she listened closely to everything he said. As the show was about to begin, she went through an obviously well worn check list about his behavior. She concluded with, “You know, if you have a melt-down, we will have to leave.” His enthusiasm went dry for a moment and he nodded his understanding. The program started; my neighbors kept up an endless stream of questions and answers in both directions and I sensed that the show had two venues, the one on stage and the one two chairs removed. 

After the magician produced a real-deal, white rabbit the boy couldn’t contain himself. He had to stand up, inching toward the steps that led up on stage. She restrained him verbally with no anxiety, not threatening. The magician needed a volunteer and the boy really, really wanted to be that volunteer. But it had to be a girl. He was fraught with disappointment, almost too much to be contained but he managed. They did the rope trick where he cuts the rope into pieces and the volunteer holds the pieces. Then when she gives them back he magically restores the rope to a single piece. Still standing, still shuffling his feet toward the stage, my little neighbor was beside himself. He wanted to be up on the stage so bad it hurt. When it came time for a boy volunteer, he didn’t wait for the magician to choose one; he started up the steps. Lucky, we were over on the far side of the stage where nobody was watching. The lady was able to call him back but he was distraught. Stamping his feet, waving his arms, crying; all he could do was protest. The “M” word come up, melt-down, and he collected himself a little bit but it would’t last. He wanted to be the volunteer and another boy had been picked. He inched forward only to be called back. In a last act of disappointment he threw himself down in the empty seat between his grandmother and myself, he missed the chair. In a heap on the floor he launched into a tirade. He wasn’t injured but I’m sure it didn’t feel good either. They had words, I looked around and nobody was watching us. The audience was watching the magic and laughing. It was like our own little time warp, our own little bubble. For almost an hour, I was torn between competing performances; one rehearsed, the other spontaneous. 

I could end the story here but it’s not the end. I can’t be sure but I am a storyteller and I make things up. I’m guessing but I guess that vermillion hair grandmother or neighbor or friend spends a lot of time with the boy. I have friends who would have taken her to task for not beating his ass but it was clear to me, he was’t a spoiled brat. She understood, he was doing the best he could. Sometimes you have a life and sometimes it has you. I never had to bear the burden of caring for an autistic or schizophrenic or otherwise broken child. It's always protracted, dealing with those demons comes after the fact and we never catch up. I’m still guessing but I guess the end of this story is in doubt, too many question marks between the magic show and Ever-after. What I took home wasn't rabbits in hats or ropes that repair themselves, it was the magic of ordinary people who become the person that someone needs, rather than the one they would rather  be. 

HOW THE WORLD WORKS

This is something I’ve tried before but it’s always muddled out in a mess. It is probably the biggest idea one could contemplate, how the world works. How a fork works is easy; you snag some food on the pointy end, hang on to the other end and transfer the morsel into your mouth. The world is another story. To go there one must be ready to create a library or limit the scope to a manageable, few paragraphs. I failed in previous attempts to limit the scope sufficiently.

The first thing is make the distinction between the physical earth; core, mantle, continents, seas and atmosphere, as opposed to the human experience. Matter comes in several forms; solid, liquid, gas and plasma. They behave predictably, in compliance with natural laws such as gravity, conservation of matter and energy, electromagnetism, thermodynamics and such. With all of those laws stirring the pot, although not succinctly a law; things change. Tectonic plates migrate, ice ages come and go, so do mountain ranges and the climate changes. The planet has been on its evolutionary path for billions of years. People, as we know them have only been around for a million years or so.

For people, a working world not only includes the physical part but it also requires the human experience. Human nature can be reduced to four words: Seek Pleasure, Avoid Pain. We are sentient creatures, self aware. Not only do we think, we think about thinking (Metacognition). Self awareness includes the knowledge of mortality. We know in advance that someday, we don’t know when, but in the end we die and it’s scary to think about. From an evolutionary standpoint, the human experience 50,000 years ago was, without a doubt, scary and dangerous. There was something about everything that generated fear. There was something about the human triumphs of cooperation and language that facilitated a creative process. We invented tools that allowed us to advance as a culture, toward civilization. Back when humans recognized that the shape of one stick was better suited for digging while another stick would make a better weapon, they were asking themselves, why and how does that work? But their knowledge base was limited to what they could see with the naked eye and could be explained by their experience. Everything that couldn’t be explained was attributed to a mystical, supernatural entity and there was a lot of that. But they were creators, they invented tools and gave birth to ideas. It seemed perfectly natural, everything must have been created, otherwise how did it get here, but by whom? Evolution from families to clans to tribes required extensive cooperation and supression of selfish desire, which ran contrary to more basic instincts. The demands of new culture were met in part by the invention of religion. It provided a basis for order and control. The pillars of morality; authority, the sacred, caring & protecting, fairness, of loyalty and belonging created a matrix for hunter-gatherers to become farmers, city builders with highly specialized roles for each person. We have evolved to cooperate within larger and larger groups while our groups tend to compete against each other. Those moral pillars, and they certainly differ from group to group, are critical to the success of each group. Iindividuals who find themselves belonging to more than one group, to competing groups discover that staying grounded, consistent with a moral compass can be a challenge. 

In the past 15,000 years culture and population density have spiked but as individuals, we are still wrestling with the same moral dilemmas. Technology has accelerated us into a no-man’s land but thinking about thinking and the burden of mortality still leave us asking; Why, and how does that work? Regardless of how profoundly we believe we are independent agents and free thinkers, we don’t get to make many independent decisions. We have been programmed from infancy by the culture we have cooked in. Upgrading that operating system is difficult and in some cases, impossible. Still we take great pride in our big brains and the perception that we do as we please. If it were possible to take your collective, moral construct and subject it to the same kind of objectivity that is inherent with critical thought and scientific inquiry, then there would be a glimmer of hope for at least some kind of intellectual independence. But the best research available tells us that we are emotional first while rationality lags behind. Logic stems from an emotional presisposition. It’s easy to believe that we control the mindd but it works at unavilable levels, above our security clearance and beyond our pay grade. That’s when we simply think we are thinking. Seek Pleasure, Avoid Pain. Carl Jung, Philosopher-Psychologist put it into context better than I can. “There is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. There is only what makes sense and what does not.” It’s how our world works. 

If you can get out of the Divine Creator/Righteous People mentality it’s a lot easier to feel good about the amazingly talented animal in the mirror. We’re not much different than hatchlings who imprint on the first creature they see, only we think aobut it and take credit for the big brain. It doesn’t make it any easier to feel comfortable with the end of life but then, the world is still a scary, dangerous place.

D.I.T.W.

Funny what you remember and what you forget. I remember sitting in the teacher’s reserved seats as the Mendon class of ’79 did their walk across the stage. The last act on the program was a slide show. It was the first time I’d seen a slide show at graduation, projected on the wall, to music. It began with photos of the graduates when they were toddlers, through elementary and middle school. There were candid shots, sports photos, band photos and finally their Sr. trip shots; it went on for twenty minutes. The music was timely, popular songs; the one I remember from that show was Kansas’ ‘Dust In The Wind.’ The song doesn’t get much air play 37 years later but whenever it does come up it takes me straight to that commencement day in May of 1979. 

At the time I knew the song and liked it; only knew sound bites of the lyrics but it was one of those songs that moves at a different level. You get a profound message, you feel it more than comprehend the words. The hippies and the rebels, the geeks and the button down collar heroes were all in sync, mezmorized as if they were all wired into the same nerve. Over time, it was the lyrics that caught up with me. They put the feeling into context. Without music it’s a poem so you feel less and ponder more. 

King Solomon, the wise; he got it right. Even kings die and someone inherits their riches, maybe a fool, maybe even an enemy. So he advised that we should live a good life, take pleasure in everything we do because it only lasts a little while. Self righteous zealots dismiss him as a Hedonist but I think his wisdom supersedes their zeal. We are small, a pin point of light, then gone in a heart beat. But we are here and we have this moment. ’Kansas’ put it to music. “. . . just a drop of water in an endless sea. Then we learn in the next verse, “All we do; crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see:    . . . nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. . .” and even a king can’t buy another minute.  All we are is dust in the wind. Big-B Believers take that for a metaphor while little-b folks understand the Solomon reality. We really are star dust constructs with a half life of nanoseconds: now there's the metaphor. “. . . close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment’s gone.” That’s what those graduating seniors sensed. It was their time, with no time to waste. I can’t speak for them now but I’m a believer: All we are is dust in the wind.

UNDERDOG

My dad didn’t care much for sports. When he was a kid, all there was was the farm and work. They played basketball and baseball at school but he had no passion for any of it. He was small for his age and a year ahead of his peer group in school. Top all that off with a Napoleon complex; he couldn’t pass up a fight, even if it wasn’t his. He mellowed with age and my mother’s influence but his flash point was easy to trip. He was never against us playing sports but neither did he have time to come watch me play and that was alright, I just wanted to play. When I asked him who he was rooting for in the World Series or a boxing match he would reply with a question of his own; to know who was playing and who was the favorite. I’d tell him and he always chose the underdog. The cards life dealt him were sufficient for a steady job, a devoted wife, three stand-up sons and the respect of people who knew him; and for him that was enough. But he couldn't shake off Napoleon; always saw himself as the underddog. Whatever he wanted, it was an up hill struggle with somebody else in better position to get there first. If you identify as the underdog, you root for underdogs. 

I recently saw two different movies, both bassed on ture stories, both revolving around the Olympic Games. In the summer games of 1936, Jesse Owens single handedly debunked Arian Superiority, Adollph Hitler and the Nazi movement. The movie followed Jesse from his enrollment at Ohio State, through the games in Berlin where he won four gold medals. It won’t win any Oscars but it did dilligence to the ugly, embarrasing  scourge of Jim Crow and other cultural injustice plyed on people of color. Still, Jessee Owens was a stallion. He was a world class athelete, tying the world record in the 100 yard dash while in high school. If he was an underdog it was in his life off the track. Racism is alive and well and any depiction of that disgrace still disturbs me, even from a self righteous culture 80 years ago.

On the other hand, Eddie Edwards was a white boy from the working class. As far as athletic abiility goes, he was average at best. Nobody, nobody except his mother saw anything remarkable in him or in his obcession with the Olympic Games. He fixated on track and field until his early teens than turned to skiing.  At great expense and inconvenience he pursued skiing until it was obvious that he could not compete with the big names. In a revelation he turned to the ski jump where Great Britain had not been represented in decades. Through a gauntlet of discoouragement and resistance from the establishment, Eddie Edwards met the standards set forth by the British Olympic Committee, that had been fashioned specifically to thwart his aspirations. Eddie was going to the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary. 

It goes without saying that in England, he enjoyed white privilege. It’s hard to imagine a black man, even in England, overcoming lack of ability to become an olympian.  After a year of self coaching and painfully slow progress Eddie was probably 15 years behind on the ski jump learning curve and a marginal athlete at best. His dream was not to win medals, rather it was the experience of representing his country, to simply be part of something grand. If he could do this without killing himself, his efforts would be a great success. Other athletes and the governing body had a different view. They represented an elite class where financial issues and national prestige were at stake. They didn’t want a ragamuffin-wanna-be taking up Olympic space. 

When Eddie landed his jump on the 70 meter hill he was extatic, celebrating the shortest, last place jump of the competition as if it were a victory. Even thogh considered an embarasment by British officials, he became an over-night folk hero. His simple, naive, unpretentious enthusiasm was so attractive and so wholesome that the world embraced him. Over a hundred years ago Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics put his brand on the games; “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” In every way, Eddie had lived up to Coubertin’s ideal. He was an underdog and my dad would have loved both Eddie and Coubertin. He opened himself up to the jabbs and insults from elitests but he also won the hearts of underdogs everywhere. The spirit of the Olympic Games has evolved and Coubertin’s egalitarrian sympathies don’t carry much weight. I think Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards was the last of his kind. It’s all about corporate sponsorship, world records, national prestige and money, money, money. But in 1988, Eddie ‘The Eagle’ flew and we all watched. In many ways I never wanted to be like my father but the underdog thing is irresistible. Struggle! Never give up!