BE NICE

         I haven't been on a road trip for a long time; hard to remember. Add to that, rehabbing an injury and you get ants in pants syndrome. I’m ready to lock windows, reset thermostat, hold the mail and get out of town. I’m sure there is a neurological, psychological explanation but it’s enough to know that I simply feel better in motion than at rest. When my kids were fussy we would take them for a ride and they settled down; maybe it's the old axiom about fruit falling from the tree. On the bicycle, in the pool, in the car, even walking; my reason for being is both simplified and satisfied. 

         Not this week but the next, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll get out of town for a couple of weeks. The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga is home for the Summerville Steam Special, steam locomotive excursion. Southern Railroad Engine #4501 and its train of 1940’s passenger cars trek all day south into Georgia and return. That’s the plan; breakfast and dinner in the dining car with china, crystal, two forks and linen napkins. A couple of hours exploring Summerville, Georgia for a mid day break and the ride back. With luck, we get low angle sunlight for good photographs. Then again, Lord willing, we want to take the backroads for a few days, antiques and flea market hopping all the way to Baton Rouge. I’m well aware of how best laid plans can discombobulate so I tend to qualify everything with the “Lord willing/high water” disclaimer. Fall colors should be near peak, end of October in the Great Smokies. 

         The last time I got away was in June, an overnighter to Omaha; before that it was March and Michigan. I guess I do remember after all. Writing while on the road provides a great segue, from what I notice to something else, something I hadn't noticed but need to address. Otherwise you bog down in the mundane, navel gazing, ruminating on stuff that has no up-side. A friend, former minister turned sociology professor told me, “You didn’t screw the world up, neither can you fix it. So live the best life you can. Be responsible. Be nice.” Responsible can be tricky; Nice comes easy. 

UNDER A LEDGE

Most of the time I write with an audience in mind. But sometimes it’s just me, chewing on stuff that won’t go away and this is one of those times. It is 2:30 in the morning. I woke up from a dream or maybe just restlessness, unable to sleep. I usually post my journal work in a blog that anybody can access but I don’t know about this one. 

I am at odds with my own kind. At the root of that dilemma is a marginal, manageable case of misanthropy. I don’t hate people, I just find over and again that humanity or society, whichever you like,  falls terribly short of my expectations; so much that I don’t want to identify with them. People may  be alright on a one to one but let them get together in a bunch and they bring out the worst in each other. Here in America they call it competition and it's supposed to be a good thing but if that’s the human condition, I’m not comfortable with it. Buried deep in the human psyche is the principle of the Golden Rule. “Do Unto Others” is not only altruistic but also self serving. Without reciprocity, the GR doesn’t work. Being treated well doesn’t have to come back from a particular source but it has to show up in the mix. People want to think otherwise but the less one’s good works come back around, the easier it is to look the other way. When good will comes easy we feel self righteous and when it’s difficult, we make excuses. Hypocrisy and integrity are opposite sides of the same coin and we spend both sides with a clear conscience. Human nature; that’s what we do. 

  I feel alien in my native culture. I do believe in the axiom, “Power corrupts” and my country has been the most powerful nation on earth for several generations. I don’t know how to unbelieve something so self evident. Patriotism has descended into unconditional narcissism, an all embracing addiction to nation and the military. Anything less borders on treason. I do love my country but it’s the same kind of ‘tough love’ we apply to self absorbed, bullish children. To that extent I feel like an Old Testament prophet, calling out my neighbors for their both their sins and their denial. As with the old prophets, nobody is listening. As a people, we want to be loved, admired, respected, feared and catered to, all in the same breath. In 1946 at the Nuremberg War Trials, Hitler’s second in command, Herman Goring was asked, “How did you get good people to go along?” His answer was timeless. “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” 

If I were truly brave enough to push back, the FBI would have an agent assigned to me and I’d be on the No-Fly list. So I do cognitive therapy, self help exercises to ease my mind. I am human, I’m an American, too old, too poor to start over somewhere else. Wouldn’t it be grand if people used mirrors to view the world we’ve looked away from instead of tunnel vision on one’s own painted face. If we can't do that it would be great to leave a legacy like MLK Jr or Woody Guthrie. But I’ve always been a dreamer and life has me on another path. My legacy would be one of sitting under a ledge, waiting for the storm to pass. 

WEAK HYDROGEN BONDS

I was the middle son of three boys, wanting nothing more really than to please my parents. Sure I wanted a bicycle and a ball glove but at the end of the day was the hope that something I did would make them proud. They never preached thank goodness, what I should do or believe; it wasn’t their nature to preach. What they did was to live day by day, hour by hour, consistent with the rules and beliefs of their experience. To that end, my foundation was not one of lectures or instruction but one of demonstrated examples, behavior and a sense of identity I could hang my hat on. 

Even if boys don’t rebel they have an inherent need to assert themselves. That often pans out as the prodigal son who spurns his parent’s wisdom in a quest for his own revelation. I questioned their politics and held on to their religion. In college I really took the bait of a conservative world view. The free will, personal accountability model sounds so right when you have time and privilege on your side. We are what we chose to be, you get what you deserve. Amen, thank you Jesus. After a couple of decades, that youthful meandering corrected itself.  

I had rediscovered the wisdom of “The Greater Good.” As much as Western thought has emphasized the importance of the individual, the greedy self still has to balance with a generous spirit. We are an Ultrasocial, Hive Culture, like bees. As much as we need to take care of ourselves, we must take care of each other as well. Specialization and division of labor makes individuals interdependent. Bees don’t fly off when times get rough, looking for a better job. If the hive fails, the bees all die. Interestingly, there are no King Bees; but that’s another story. I love the freedom that comes with individuality but I also realize it comes at a price. “Liberty” zealots would easily point out my error but that would be like football coaches around a chalk board, arguing one strategy over another. Whoever gets the chalk last, wins.

Faith based Believers would also take me to task. As a kid I got the omnipotent God thing but never could buy into Jesus. He had a good story but so did Pinocchio. I really tried to walk that walk but I think that was about pleasing Mom & Dad. It was like shooting hoops alone in the side yard, pretending I was a star in the Olympics. When lunch time came, I was just a hungry 10 year-old. An adult life invested in science education simply sucked all the air out of that balloon. Big “B” Believers are statistically happier than heretics but so are children who still believe in Santa. It is amazing how much better you feel when your own personal, irreversible truth is that you get to live forever. When we feel vulnerable we want absolute, universal truth, right now and the only place they sell that is at the myth store. Science is a system with people and process, not a belief. It simply claims: We have a good process, slow at times but it works. We share and explain what we learn. If it changes we write new books to show that change. In practice, the purpose of science is not to prove something, but to disprove everything. What survives that gauntlet then has to stand on its own legs. The fact that we use what we learn to advance our own interests and profit is about us, not about science. 

Faith is strong stuff but your faith is about you, not the object. What I believe is always followed by a disclaimer; “...until I learn otherwise.” As close as I come to Faith is a high degree of confidence in gravity and weak hydrogen bonds in DNA. I’ve nothing to gain by attacking someone else’s Faith. Live well, be happy. If you want religion, if you need it you should have it. It's better than Prozac and you don't need a prescription. 

HARD TO IMAGINE

If this turns out to be a rant I apologize. I have been watching PBS, the Ken Burns special on the Viet Nam war. If you’re old enough, you remember. I had completed my military obligation, came home from Southeast Asia before Americans started dying there. I was in college, didn’t have to worry about the draft. Americans don’t like to be reminded of the war we lost so we dwell on the ones we won. But the puzzle pieces fit together now since the big players are all dead and there are no special interests to sustain the myth. My generation experienced the war in many ways, from patriots who believed the propaganda to patriots who did not; from those who lost friends and loved ones to those who did not. As I watch the story unfold the feelings and memories leave me disillusioned still.  

What weighs most is the 50 year interval and how things haven't changed. Every president from Kennedy to Ford acknowledged privately that the war in Viet Nam was unwinnable. But the choice was either, appear to be weak or send more troops, drop more bombs. In hindsight, the egos and blind ambition were so transparent it’s hard to imagine anyone trusting those people. Lies are when you say something you know is not true. If you believe your own fairy tale, it’s just a mistake. Government officials lied, the generals did both. At the end of the day, getting reelected or leaving a legacy was the first priority, more important than tens of thousands of American casualties. In the beginning, the “John Wayne” charicature general promised that with 40,000 troops he could win the war in six months. Three years later he went to the president with a two year plan, asking for a quarter million troops to win the same war. Nine years later, we abandoned the unwinnable war. 

Now, 50 years up the road from that, we have been waging war in Afghanistan for 15 years, calling it something else. With some similarities to Viet Nam and some differences, we are currently preparing to send thousands more troops with a two year plan to win the fight against the bad guys (who change allegiance, reinventing themselves as need be). Is this deja vu or what? Our leaders are mostly indifferent to the lessons of Viet Nam but they are all committed to whatever it takes to be reelected. The logic I’ve been hearing all along is this: “I’m the one who will do ‘Right’ but that can’t happen if I don’t get elected.” One glaring weakness of a democracy is that we are free to elect terrible, incapable or corrupt leaders. I don’t think it’s a question of politics, rather a failure of human nature. 

This little monologue could spin off in any direction but I don’t have the stomach for it. I’ll watch again tonight and have the same mixed feelings. As a young man I was both naive and malleable, wanting to believe the pro war propaganda. When you’ve been naive and realize how you’ve been exploited, unforgiving cynicism comes easy. From the president down; from the top general down, I have no reason to believe they have learned anything from history or that any of them care at all about the world their grandchildren will grow old in. 

A PLACE TO BEGIN

Charles Caleb Cotton was an Englishman, an eccentric cleric and a popular writer, back when Englishmen wore powdered wigs, sailed sailing ships, nearly 200 years ago. Remembered more for short works and quotable aphorisms, I have no other reason to remember him. I do remember, “When you have nothing to say, say nothing.” I knew the quote but had to look up the source. When I think I should be writing but draw a blank, I remember his, “Say nothing.” 

I know some very good writers who would disagree. They say the blank mind is a wonderful place to begin. If you write rubbish for a while, just keep writing and something will come together. It’s as much about playing with words as it is about story. At the moment I’m more in tune with Cotton than my writer friends. Unmotivated rubbish is about all I’m good for. 

Maybe it’s a good sign; I should be glad it doesn’t hurt so much and I can do some things. Recovering from my bicycle crash is slow going with a lot of recovering still to do. I can move my arm all around but can’t put enough pressure on a sharp knife to cut a piece of cake. My ribcage only hurts when I take it for granted. Physical therapy begins tomorrow; expect that will disturb and excite some sensory neurons. But without some adversity I wouldn't know the difference. 

PLUS 21

“I woke up still not dead again today.” In a recent interview, 84 year-old Willie Nelson shared the hook line from a new song and some carefully worded views on the times. Libby Casey, a reporter for the Washington Post asked him several loaded questions about the current administration which he deflected. Willie is a savvy political animal when it comes to biting the hand that feeds him so he danced around issues saying, simply, “Something ain’t right.” Obviously his views on marijuana are at odds with the Attorney General and he made a few good natured jabs in that direction. Printed in small type, under her paper’s header, she showed him their motto for the year: “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” You could see the gears turning but it didn’t take long for him to grin and concur. It doesn’t take a journalist to make the point: a free press is the critical, active agent against tyranny. Every President in my memory has complained about negative press coverage but that in itself is proof of its worth.

As much as I like his music and warm to his charm, Willie is neither a solution nor a fix. He might not answer your question at all but I don’t think he’s a liar and if he was paid to perform, he will deliver. As tarnished as he may be, his integrity sparkles. I take him for what he has always been, a transparent, self serving hedonist with a good heart and a soft spot for the underdog. I liked it when he reflected on the importance of living in the present. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow never comes: do something important with the "Right Now." I think that reality is unavoidable as you near your destination. 

Today is Bike-Crash plus 21: three weeks of painfully slow healing but healing none the less. I can’t do anything very well but most things, I can, within reason, still do. I still love my bicycle: we crashed because I failed. Someday I’ll appreciate the lesson I’m supposed to learn from it: and I woke up still not dead again today. 

12 ZEROS

There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said better, by someone smarter, more knowledgable than I. But nothing is more human than ‘Story’. For me to process both the way I feel and what I know, I need narrative: I need to frame story from my own experience. Sometimes my stories are meant to be shared and other times, it’s all about me. In this case I’m not sure which; we’ll see. 

A week after landfall, Hurricane Harvey has generated nearly 20 trillion gallons of rain. How do you reconcile a double digit number with 12 zeros behind it? Most of that deluge is still contained in and around Houston, Texas where property loss and human suffering are compounding like interest on a payday loan. Every news & weather report show new and different accounts of the same story: it won’t be over for a very long time. 

Human nature can be unavoidably obvious and subtly cloaked, all in the same breath. Nothing new about natural disasters, they happen but the world is a big place. Some population somewhere is being devastated one way or another, all the time. The way we react depends on degrees of separation. Tsunamis in Japan and earth quakes in Nepal; suffering and loss were immeasurable. But when viewed from a distance, across borders, cultures, religions and languages; if we give more than a passing thought it is of course about “those poor folks” but more about “thank goodness it wasn’t here.” In either case, I am unaware of any spontaneous efforts to raise money or send aid to Asian victims of nature’s wrath.

If we don’t love or know someone ravaged by Harvey we certainly know someone who does. Sympathy is one thing, empathy is another: their pain is our pain. Twelve years ago, Katrina touched me by only one degree of separation. I can’t forget the sense of helplessness and the overwhelming burden of shoveling mud out of the house, into the street; removing worthless jetsam, once treasured, reduced to toxic rubbish?  Then, after you have literally spent yourself in that grueling ordeal, how do you start life over? I don’t think it’s about choices or free will, I think it’s inherent, programmed into every cell in the body. We are compelled to find food and rest, we move and do rather than lie down and give up. At the end of the week or the month, I had a place to go, high and dry, in a community with a strong economy and functioning infrastructure, removed from the chaos. 

I identify somewhat with the protagonist in Stephen Crane’s novel, “The Red Badge Of Courage”. Henry Fleming was not a hero in any sense. Still by proximity and coincidence he prospered from the carnage. I have a real, personal experience with wind, flood and human tragedy but I didn’t have to bear its weight. That hurricane-disaster story is being replayed in Houston the same way a Broadway musical is recast and taken on tour, city to city, decades after its first performance. We know it will happen but pray it will be somewhere else, to people we don’t know. 

News media, being what it is, gives us a scripted account that emphasizes devastation and glorifies human resiliance. It draws high ratings and tells the story we want to hear. Instinct serves us well when the tribe is under siege. Media stresses the nobility of selfless individuals and to some extent I agree. But that collective, altruistic response, expressed by individuals is deeply rooted in our common genetics. We don’t make the decision; it makes us. 

I have no skin in this game. I feel the pain because we have tribal ties and I’ve seen for myself. There are plenty of individuals and organizations in motion, moving to assist and provide for those people in need. There is nothing significant that I can do now. But six months or a year from now, when the news has moved on to some other crisis there will be opportunity. An old man can be the extra hands and eyes that someone in south Texas needs. I did that in ’07 in Waveland, Mississippi after Katrina. There was still plenty of work to do, plenty of people who needed help. I don’t have a plan but I trust, something will come together. The fact that I think about it, that I want to do something is more about meeting my own need than about how it will serve someone else. 

I’ve been reading Yuval Harari’s book, Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind. He makes the point that; “It is an inevitable rule of history that what seems obvious in hindsight is impossible to predict beforehand.” So I will keep putting my best foot forward in the hope that something good comes of it.