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. 

A BIG H

Nothing like a train wreck to get your attention. Whatever was on your plate before might as well never have been there. Forty six hours ago I was on my way to begin an hour and a half bike ride. Two hours later I was in the Emergency Room with a broken Scapulae and ribs. I was on my bicycle when we crashed in a heap. In the shadows and waning light I didn’t see the pothole. Flesh and bone are not as durable as steel so between me and my bike, I came out the worst for it. I don’t remember my head hitting but my $119 helmet has a deep, terrible scar. The CT scan showed no damage to the head other than minor abrasions so it did its job. Now, in the clarity of hind sight, all those things I intended to do yesterday and today, they don’t mean a thing. 

They kept me overnight and ran me through more tests than I thought I needed but that demonstrates the parallel principle of hospital-medical care. The people you come in contact with are doctors, nurses & technicians who only want to make you well again. Four stories up in a corner office, the people you don’t meet are preoccupied with a different priority. They are administrators who operate by a more complicated principle; the more services you provide, the higher the bill and the greater the profit. Who pays doesn’t matter, only that they make people well, and they are committed to that, for as much money as they can justify - and, my injuries were serious, with potential to be even more so. They really wanted to keep me another day but I refused and they let me go. 

I don’t know when I’ll brush my teeth again with my right hand or ride my bike for that matter. The young Orthopedic PA went over my x-rays and said, “On a fractured scapulae like this, recovery takes 4 to 6 weeks.” Short pause and I asked, “What about the hanging clause?” She didn’t get it. I continued, “The one that belongs on the end of that sentence: If you are 18 years-old.” “Oh, yeah;” she said, “it’s going to take you a little longer.” I don’t know what percentage my insurance will cover but her consultation will be in there for sure. 

There were no accompanying revelations or or paradigm shifts; I’m not going to get religion or change politics but I’m paying  more attention to things I’ve taken for granted for a while. I’m reminded that this life is not only precious but it is also fragile. I’m reminded how much you love the people in your Tribe. You may not like some of them all that much but you love them. I am compelled to take inventory on not only life but the times as well. I love my country but times are troubled. I’m too old to influence anything beyond my tribe but then I’ve never been a threat to anybody, no reason to start making noise now. I am, I think all of us are like the man riding his bicycle in the evening shadows, knowing neither when not where the next pothole waits or what will break from the fall. 

Too many of my cohorts are angry because they’ve been told they should be angry: that it’s someone else’s fault. They listen like disciples to narcissist hubris from self obsessed, ego maniacs and it’s bubbling like a toxic cauldron. The kettle hates the pot: those self styled messiahs can go to Hell as far as I care. I wouldn’t give them a dollar or a minute and I certainly wouldn’t vote for their selfish agenda. I’ll get back on my bicycle as soon as I’m fit and it’s safe and I’ll do better at reminding my tribe-mates that I love them, I really do, that I’ll buy coffee, and I’ll give them a ride or hold the light, whatever they need. 

I slept in my recliner last night, under a sheet, under the ceiling fan and I slept well. I feel better tonight than when I woke up, can do more with less discomfort (clinical term for bearable pain,) Thank Prometheus for the light and while we're being thankful, for ibuprofen as well.  I’ll go there again tonight. I don’t have faith in anything but I do have Hope with a big H. I can take it by its handle and move in sync with what is important to me. If humans are superior to animals then we should be more humane: we need each other, not as competitors but because this life is tuff enough when we cooperate. 

EMERGENCE

I had a birthday just the other day. One of my boys calls it the Anniversary Of One’s Emergence From The Maternal Incubation Unit. That it was. I had been advised by my coffee group that I shouldn’t miss our 9:00 a.m. convergence. Someone had invested in a BD card and didn’t want either to throw it away or take it home. So I did my own due diligence, made a blueberry cobbler for the occasion, took some frozen yogurt and we had a celebration. There were probably 10 or 11 in attendance. 

Someone asked about the number and I confessed, there was a time when I preferred one number to another but that’s history. The rhetoric about, “It’s just a number.” starts out as a thin denial about age but then one year, probably different for different people, a birthday comes along and you realize, you really don’t care anymore. It really is just a number. If I could just run like I used to; not fast or far but actually hit stride and stretch out crossing 4 lanes at a stop light, any number would be great. 

I’ve had plenty but remember only a few. It must have been 1942 or ’43, I would have been turning 3 or 4. Any younger and I wouldn’t remember, any older and I’d have been too big. I had two aunts, Raydean and Betty Jean, in their early 20’s, both married to soldiers gone off to war. They took me for a walk; we lived in the city with sidewalks and drug stores. I was between them, each one holding one of my hands, swinging them in time as we sang a song. I don’t remember the song but I was able to chime in on the chorus. When we stepped down off a curb I picked up my feet and they swung me up and forward. Throwing my head back I could see them upside down, they were beautiful. Across the street at the other curb we did it again, stepping back up on the sidewalk, every block, all the way to the drug store. It had an old fashioned soda fountain with chrome levers and ivory handles. At the counter we sat on tall stools that spun around. We did that for a while, waiting for the soda jerk to bring us our scoop of vanilla ice cream with red, must have been strawberry topping. Between the spoon and a straw, I made a mess. They took turns dipping a napkin into ice water, washing all the dribbles off my face. We retraced, repeated our curb swinging trek over 6 or 7 blocks, back to our house on Tracy Street. I don’t know what I got in the way of presents or what kind of cake we ate but there must have been a celebration. At the time, I was the baby and the center of attention. 

In my coffee group I must be near the high-middle or lower-older of the age span; nobody under 60 if I judge age right. One friend wouldn’t leave it alone so I told him the number. I’ve a thing with numbers. I remember jersey numbers from my own playing days and of my favorite players, any sport. My number this birthday is the same as my first football jersey number my freshman year in high school. It was our first game and we wore white jerseys with blue numbers. Coach didn’t even look, just grabbed one off thee pile and threw it at me. When I pulled it over my head and shoulder pads the sleeves hung down well past my hands. I rolled them up but they wouldn’t stay up. At 115 lbs. a freshman lineman doesn’t get to play in the game but you do get to line up in the pre game exercises and do tackling drills. 

#78 - my first football number and my current age number. The blueberry cobbler was a hit and I had some left over to bring home. It was so rich I was on a sugar buzz all day. Blueberries are really good for you, full of antioxidants and vitamins but they don’t change color on the way through the maze. If you don’t pay attention it might go unnoticed but I notice. I think it’s going to be a good year but years unfold a day at a time. It’s a good day today and I'll take it. 

THE BEST WE CAN

In early spring, before yards need mowing, grass grows clumpy with bare spots here and there. Time flies and before you know it, little yellow flowers start popping up. So you tune up the mower and sharpen blades, welcome the change of seasons. The flowers are pesky weeds but still, you welcome them. Too soon, those little flowers have stretched their necks up and the yellow petals have given way a frizzy, fuzzy wig of gray dandelion seeds that gradually sail away, carried off one by one on even the gentlest breeze. 

Sixty years ago, (OMG that sounds like such a long time,) my high school classmates and I were wispy little dandelion seeds, fresh launched from the blossom, drifting like little parachutes through chain link fences, across streets, looking for a place to take root. You land somewhere and people don’t care where you came from, just, what are you doing here? We were only a few weeks into our great adventure; sixty years ago. Yesterday a small group of us got together to mark that milestone. There were 9 of us from the tornado class of ’57; a tornado destroyed our school the night before graduation. Include a friend from the class of ‘58, loved ones and one faculty member, now 96, she was our librarian and psychology teacher. Nobody at the reunion/picnic had to drive more than an hour or two to get there. They are all regulars or frequent drop-ins at our monthly lunch-bunch. There must have been 15 or 16 in the shade of the shelter house.

Without metaphors I don’t think I could describe or explain anything. I need them to model patterns and systems: it’s about me and the way my mind works. So the dandelion metaphor is spot on. From the way our hair turns gray and falls out, to the folly of thinking you can please everybody; life carries us along like wind blown seeds and we do the best we can.

I recently saw a program on PBS about a man in Kenya who nurtured an orphan lion cub. He kept the cub for over a year but his job and the needs of the animal required both return to the world they were born to. Then, 5 or 6 years later, the man came back to the wild life refuge and wondered how his lion-child had fared. With more hope than confidence, he drove out into the bush to see if he could find her. There were several different lion prides in the park that the young lion could have joined. He camped in his land rover and searched each pride's territory. He found a lion he thought might be his. She had two cubs. Approaching her would be risky so he called out to her from the vehicle and she turned at the sound of her name. Long story short, she recognized him; they wrestled and played like they had when she was his baby. She brought her cubs and clearly presented them to him. They played together all day, then went back to the way of life that had chosen them. 

Another metaphor I suppose: in our little group, nobody cares about your religion or politics. Like the man and his lion, we can set aside our instincts and priorities for a few hours, mindfully attached to another time, when the journey was new and unpredictable, before hard knocks had taken their toll. I replied to an email from a friend in the class of ’58. He participates in our class news letter and we keep him on our radar. I told him it may sound corny but the reason we keep-on keeping-on is that we actually care about each other. After all the years and the baggage we bear, we remind each other; we care. Even if we weren't the best of friends then, that was then and this is now. The psychology is pretty simple. You can’t go back, probably wouldn’t if you could. But lunch with well wishing litter mates who remember when, who only want from you what you are happy to share; it closes a circle and we all take some comfort there. 

It comes up occasionally, why more of our classmates don’t chose to come around. Once I was apologizing for not living up to someone else's expectation and they let me off the hook with, "No problem, something else must have been more important." I think that's the simple truth and it's not a problem. There must have been something more important. All I want from it is simply to know that you’ve made it. Knowing that you’ve made it is important. We break bread together and so far, the worst thing to come from that is I over eat and may have to skip dinner.