SAYETH THE LORD: DAY 198

  About the time I started school, we started monthly outings to south of Nevada, Missouri to check on my surrogate grandparents. Ida, Sally and Forrest Cole were siblings, children of an old farmer-Civil War veteran. The Cole’s raised my dad from when he was a toddler. In my time, Sally and Forrest lived off a dirt, county road in a tiny, no plumbing or electricity, 3 room house at the end of a long two-track. We stayed with them in warm weather. My brother and I slept with pillows on a folded, quilt mat on the floor while our parents slept on folding, canvas army cots. 

Ida had married Hiram Stockdale, an old, bachelor farmer a few miles up the road. A marriage of convenience, neither had ever been married but in their 70’s, they agreed, so to speak, to look after each other. Their’s was an explosive, volatile arrangement as both had short fuses and wicked tempers. She came over in a horse drawn spring wagon to visit and break bread. Sometimes we stopped Sunday morning at the Stockdale place on our way home. In cold weather we stayed there, with two wood stoves and beds for everyone. I remember poking my nose out from under a feather-down comforter to the smell of bacon and the wood stove in the kitchen. As harsh and unforgiving as she was with Hiram, Ida was an affectionate mother hen to my brothers and me. I remember the touch of her gnarled old hands on my head and shoulders, and on my face. 
Time drags and you think you will never grow up but then you do.  Seventy five years have slipped away, a day at a time. But time is cheap and plentiful when it lies in wait, spread out ahead like a magic carpet. One of life’s great ironies, how the body grows old but the child inside is trapped in a timeless place. 
With Covid-19 and all of the world’s other woes, putting the best foot forward can be a challenge. Finding fault with people and how they do their business is too easy, why go there? We are what we are, rational animals that dispute the merits of good and evil. Beyond that; Monkey see, monkey do. I want to believe in the human capacity for balance and good will. Still, I’m afraid that corruption (especially corruption) plus oppression and war, they will be with us until we find a more efficient, more effective way to self destruct. Until then, assuming the end doesn’t come on my watch, I would look for the good in people, try to nurture more and squabble less. I think maybe that’s what the Cole family legacy has left me with; greed is insatiable, don’t feed it. Life is difficult enough.
What can I say about the mental acuity of the voting public? Look who was elected to the highest office in the land; an extreme narcissist, bigot, demagogue with the emotional maturity of a 3 year-old. It bears out the truth of a quote attributed to Abe Lincoln, the one about fooling some of the people, all of the time. In this case, enough people to be elected President. He may very well win again. I understand group dynamics but really. . . If this is what makes Americans extraordinary, then ‘extraordinary’ is not the accolade I thought it was. 
The Cole family was extraordinary. Their legacy has been, and for as long aa I can tell their story, it will be about struggle and never giving up. Life seeks after itself and wherever it takes root, it will find a way. They lived in a barter economy along with their dirt poor neighbors. None of them could come up with the ante to get into the game. As long as government and big business (Banks) sleep together, poor people will be expendable, cannon fodder. The Coles all died penniless and spent with less accumulated than when they began. I think their tenacious struggle was extraordinary. 
The disappearing middle class is shrinking and those left behind blame the next ones below them on the status ladder, the have-nots. The taste of prosperity is losing its salt for working people and still they approve massive tax cuts for the 1%, aiming their anger at the next rung below, not the culprits who rob from the top down with deadly attorneys and ill-gotten gain. I guess it comes natural as fox and mice. It takes a lot of mice to sustain the fox. But fear not sayeth the Lord, there will always be enough mice. They reproduce like poor people. In the end, if you love someone who knows the touch of your gnarled old hands and they love you in return, you did well. 

GREAT METAPHOR: DAY 194

  I need to do some navel gazing this morning. It doesn’t offer much in the way of spectator sport but for the gazer, it is therapeutic. Reading this might be about as exciting as watching someone study a road map. Still the person engaged can collect and correlate useful information that would be unavailable otherwise. Navel gazing requires me to internalize, to mediate with myself, to weight what might come next, simulate other possibilities. Often it revisits old ideas to see if they have shifted their feet. Gazing can simply beg questions; if-then or, either-or. Sometimes all I need is to reframe a question and clarity emerges out of the murk. 
The current social climate (politics & religion) is uncomfortable if not disheartening but like the weather, I’m stuck with it. A little navel gazing can’t hurt. I’ve heard it said, a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client. Trying to analyze one’s own psyche would seem the same but I like to think my navel gazing is more like random shuffling of my ducks rather than trying to get them lined up.
I have spent many, many hours reading, studying, discussing and rethinking why it is, how it is that people believe and behave as they do. We (humans) are intelligent and resourceful, we use conscious intellect to theorize and invent both gadgets and schemes to serve our every whim. But we haven’t made the leap yet, the one where emotional bias concedes to rules of reason. Tribal instinct and self-indulgence continue to drive human/human relations. E.O. Wilson said it best; with a great metaphor; he calls us “. . .an evolutionary chimera picking up things from every age without fully transitioning out of any one era. That's why we are a complicated mix of paleolithic emotions, medieval leftovers like banks and religion, and now the latest addition: God-like technology.” Mankind has mastered interplanetary travel yet lacks the insight, certainly lacks the will to mend his own inhumanity. Imagine a family with a new, smart television. They set it up on its stand, hardwire the TV to a solar panel and cut off the power cord. Then they use the cut-off cord to strangle strangers who come to the door. 
Nobody wants to believe such stuff so we believe what makes us feel good. Denial and confabulation (another great word) allow people to justify horrible behavior. Rulers, leaders, whatever the culture or nationality, they talk trash in the moment but like Gilgamesh, they think if they get it right they can be Gods; and Gods don’t have to answer to anybody, ever. Wouldn’t that be a hoot; where do I sign up?
Collectively, we are addicted to comfort and convenience (allowed to survive) so we do what is required to maintain status quo, like bees in the hive. Like those bees, we are a super-social species, we need each other. But we are also super-creative, unlike the bees. We can’t get by on instinct alone, have always needed a backstory that gives life meaning and purpose. When language was relatively new, Myth (Human-story) was created that supported and validated a particular social order. We still require myth, it is where you look for a moral measure to gauge how you are doing. From Zeus to Jesus, myth has given us a blueprint for what is acceptable, right and wrong, what we should aspire to and who we can safely emulate. 
E.O. Wilson is right there with Crazy Horse and MLK Jr. in my own personal mythology. Most of my countrymen would choose to emulate Wayne La Pierre or a Confederate general who lost at war but endures in the myth. My vision of what makes a worthy purpose is out of sync with what is popular and prideful but it is mine just the same. Keeping with Wilson, when time was kept on the calendar and twenty miles was still a long way, religion served a worthy purpose. It created infrastructure for an extended community where strangers could identify with each other and serve the greater good. In the new century, it has become little more than another power seeking, political ideology where Jesus would be crucified for defending his right to carry a dagger and a sword. 
I am not complaining. A thousand years ago, anywhere you look on the planet, life was bleak and suffering was the norm. The human experience has improved dramatically, universally. It is hard to imagine the life and times of a medieval commoner. Thinking about a return to the good old days, when America was great; think again. I may not like the President (I don’t) and I may think our legal system is corrupt (it is) and when conservatives tell me that I am naive (I already knew that) I let it go and when I tell them they have a blind spot in their moral fabric (and they do) they deny, deny, deny. I give thanks for living in the present. The good old days weren’t all that good; what seemed so good was that we were young.

OMSISCIENT 'WE': DAY 189

  When we learn better, we will know better. Then, knowing better, we can do better. But what will we do in the meantime? That is what I would allude to as the omniscient “We”. “We” may be neither all knowing nor all seeing but it presumes an all-inclusive, universal consensus as to who we are and who we are not. I hate it when people use “We” indiscriminately. Just who is included in this “We”? There was a time when I stopped using the word, “we” altogether. I might have said, “Those of us . . .” followed by a qualifier: “who believe in love at first sight. . .” Without naming names or limiting the scope of possibility, I have singled out a subgroup of humans (not the omniscient we) by something shared in particular. If my little hangup seems benign or trivial then so be it, but I hate it (strong word) when conversation/discussion gets lost in a maze of vague generalities. It is quite possible, even unavoidable at times to think there is consensus when in fact there is no way to know. We, you and I, we can agree that, “doing the right thing.” is a good thing. But the “Right Thing” here depends on a predetermined, moral construct. Like software on the computer, morals are downloaded over time and subject to necessary updates. That part of computer function goes on without the operator’s permission. Humans do not get to chose what makes right or wrong either. At some point the subconscious informs the conscious, what is right and what is wrong. Still, the conscious human would rather choose than be informed so it dances with its new partner until a feeling of compatibility is achieved.
I don’t like the omniscient “We”. I associate with a group of people who like to dig in philosophical holes, discuss and debate every alternative. When the going heats up and you have trouble getting a word in, it is easy to shortcut the process with vague generalities. I’ve never been in a hurry to conclude a discussion. It is after all about the journey; at least for me. So when I start hearing the omniscient “We”, rather than interrupt their focus with my distraction I disengage, cat nap, get a new cup of coffee. “What can ‘we’ do? Why don’t ‘we’? ‘We’ have never. . .” on and on. If it is about the ancient Greeks I can frame that in my mind, the Japanese in WW2, I can frame that as well. Sometimes I just need to let it go, understand that my perspective isn’t necessary. Call it smoke on the water. It is a little more civil than pee in the wind. I can speak for me and that’s about as far as my ego needs be fed. 

STRANGER THAN FICTION: DAY 186

  I have been telling and retelling this story for so long I can’t be sure if I lived it or if it lived me. Truth can be stranger than fiction for sure and fiction can reveal truths that never happened at all. StoryTellers have been exploring that foggy never-land for as long as there has been story.

In my upstairs bedroom, in our old, clapboard farmhouse on Blue Ridge, it got unbearably hot. So I would take a sheet and pillow down under the locust trees in our front yard, to an Adirondack lawn chair my dad had made from scrap boards. I slept soundly, stirring occasionally to whining tires on the Ridge or the wail of a steam whistle down on the K.C. Southern line. One pitch dark night I woke up to a bright light shining down through the treetops. A voice called down, “LeRoy, LeRoy, are you down there?” That was when I went by my middle name. The light was too bright and the dark was too dark, I couldn’t see a thing. “LeRoy, wake up!” I mumbled something and squinted my eyes. “LeRoy, when you were born you were left here on Earth by mistake. You are not one of them.” I understood what the voice had said but too muddled to reply, I just sat there. “We have missed you. It is time for you to come home with us so we can all be together again.” 

I thought about Superman, come to earth from another planet, adopted by good people. Could it be? I didn’t have any super powers but there have been many times when I felt like an alien. I asked  how I would get up to them and the voice came back, “We will throw down a ladder.” Just then, as I stood up, the porch light came on. My mom called out; “Is everything alright out here?” I said that it was. She turned off the light and went back inside. The bright light and the voice, they were gone. That hot summer night was enough to sprout the seed, to beg the question: am I an alien? I always sensed I was different; had I been left here by mistake?  

It is a recurring dream, not too often but enough, enough to keep begging the question. “Was I left behind by mistake?” If I could phone home like E.T. I wold still be dialing. I wondered if my search party would ever come back. I still wonder. Seventy earth years later, I wonder. I have acclimated to Earth and human culture, not that it fits like a glove but I manage. People get transplanted erroneously all the time here and they manage. The ugly duckling outgrew its paradox, reunited with other longneck swans, a happy ending. But I never outgrew the ‘Human’ look. 

In my lifetime, through 14 presidents, through major wars and undeclared hostilities, through Jim Crow, through unmitigated nationalism, through millions of innocent victims, untold crimes against humanity; occasionally something good unfolds. They finally let women vote and fatherhood is no longer license to beat your family. But women are still exploited openly and domestic abuse runs unchecked just under the radar. 

In my lifetime, technology has made the leap from a flathead Ford V8 to soft landings on Mars, from aspirin to laser surgery. One would think, with evolved brain power, we would naturally become better people. But as we employ better physics and chemistry, every generation must reinvent the wheel of human interactions, over and again. I am feeling alien, with no recourse. We are stuck in a repeating cycle of arrested development. Civilization is bogged down if not stuck with the emotional balance and poise of a 3 year-old. Poets and peaceful souls, they babble platitudes and proverbs as if someone were taking it to heart. Their wisdom falls on anxious ears but with every important decision, the petulant 3 year-old is called in to prevail. All it lacks is experience and reason, no empathy only apathy, no patience only distain. 

As wonderful as it seems, the curse of intellect and reason is that they only comprehend and recommend. At the end of the conversation, a self righteous 3 year-old has to decide. I am feeling alien to this planet and its people. When I go to the bank I drive by the old place. The old, clapboard house is gone with a modern one story in its place. The old trees have given way to new trees. Still, every time, I note the spot where, on hot summer nights, the Adirondack chair used to cradle me and the question begs itself again. “LeRoy, are you there?”

NOT THAT I DON'T: DAY 181

I sat down to write several times yesterday but nothing there. Today I sat down hoping for something better. When ‘something better’ crossed my mind a song came with it. Back in the mid 1980’s, country music was either more digestible than it is now or my taste hadn’t narrowed yet. Don Williams was a bass/baritone singer with a simple story in his lyrics. His nick name resonated everything that made him popular, the ‘Gentle Giant’. This morning I imagined his voice; “Lord I hope this day is good, I’m feeling empty and misunderstood. I should be thankful Lord, I know I should. But Lord I hope this day is good.” 

It’s not that I don’t like country music, I just don’t care for the next generation after Don Williams. When southern rock with its in-your-face attitude faded we got a heavy dose of shaved heads, goatees, syrupy grandpa songs and wannabe good-old-boys. I went back to James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt and Clapton. Yet Don Williams was a simple but truly civilized link to another time. “I don’t need fortune and I don’t need fame. Send down the thunder Lord, send down the rain. But when you’re plannin’ just how it will be, plan a good day for me.” 

I am hoping for a long string of good days. Even old heretics like myself, we concede to human nature. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a mysterious force out there that would make our days better simply because we concede with conviction. Magic is in the eye of the believer rather than the hand of the Wizard. If you solve the mystery you lose the magic. So I would try to be like Kris Kristofferson. He, like Don Williams, keeps it simple;  “And I stopped beside a Sunday school, and listened to the song that they were singing. Then I headed back for home, and somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing.” 

A long string of good days would be awesome but that might be pushing my luck. I don’t want to seem greedy. Either way, by intervention or by random chance, a good day today would be cause for thanksgiving. Wishful thinking is comfortable, good for as long as it lasts but if I want a better day I’ll have to move my feet and be glad I still can. Human nature, that’s what comes in our tool box; it’s not a choice. 

I TAKE THAT TO MEAN: DAY 179

Yesterday was 9/11. I missed it. But I do remember 12/7, a day that will live in infamy forever. Japan was ruled by hyper-aggressive military bigots. They gave us a bloody nose and thought we would concede to a negotiated peace. I was 2 years-old at the time. My memory can’t dredge up stuff from 1941 but I watched the old news reels and heard the speech so many times, I remember the date that will live in infamy. 

September 11, 2001 is similar in some ways but very different in others. It was a sneak attack with airplanes to be sure. Thousands of Americans were killed and the cost in dollars was immense but the perpetrators had little in common with Japanese generals. If one wants to frame 9/11 in the light of World War 2 then the 9/11 raid on New York would be more like the Jimmy Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April of 1942. It was an airborne, sneak attack on a mighty power. The Doolittle mission dropped their bombs and made their escape while 9/11 was a suicide mission. More than the damage, they both sent a message. “You can’t treat us this way and think we will roll over and play dead.” It was a warning, “This is just the beginning, there’s more to come.” 

The Doolittle raid featured Admiral Chester Nimitz and lead pilot, Jimmy Doolittle; heroes of the highest order. The New York raid was led by Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta, heroes in their own right. If you were a devout, middle eastern muslim who hated the U.S.A., you would name your kids after them. The difference; we won WW2 and it’s no secret that history books are written by the winners. Osama bin Laden and his followers have been hunted down and eliminated but thousands of like minded muslims continue to hate us, would kill us if they could.

For centuries, the Middle East & North Africa were ruled by the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey). At the end of World War One the empire was broken up into pieces and parceled out, controlled/manipulated by the winners; Great Britain, France & the U.S.A. The new tribal regions were united by religion (Islam) but new to the business of worldwide politics. For the western powers it was easy, propping up puppet governments, keeping muslim brothers at odds with each other while the riches of the region were siphoned off to the West.

Leapfrog ahead to 2001: muslim sects and political action groups had organized across national boundaries, exercising power wherever they took root. They were like birds, little, migratory flocks without boundaries. Is it a surprise that they had grown to hate the West? Their attack on New York had a lot in common with the Boston Tea Party/Bunker Hill. They were following our old play book except they brought it to us in our homeland. 

I have no particular sympathy for Islam as a religion or a culture. Religion serves the greater good until it strays into politics. Then it’s just another special interest group, superimposing itself on whatever is in the way, whatever it takes. When people feel powerless and feel they must act in their own defense, terrorism may be the only option. Then they copy from the American revolutionaries, hiding behind trees and targeting officers. British authorities called them cowards and terrorists. If you are going to play war, you must stand up and fight fair. Hiding and killing officers was cowardly and immoral. It hasn’t changed. An AK-47 is no match for laser guided missiles. So they hide behind noncombatants, use crude, roadside bombs with devastating effects. For that we call them cowards and cheaters. Terrorism is as old as conflict itself and the morality of that strategy depends on which side you are on.

I resist partisan hyperbole. Sometimes we take the high road, other times we don’t. Holding ourselves accountable by the same scale we measure others is not subversive. To that extent, I don’t feel like I’ve betrayed anyone. Stephen Decatur is remembered for his patriotic fervor when he spoke, “My country, right or wrong, my country.” I take that to mean, any wrong-doing or moral failure can be sanctified if we link it to a patriotic purpose. We have a president now who uses that strategy at every turn in the road and I take no comfort there. If he wins, he gets to write his own history, glorify his own brand of self righteous hypocrisy. 

Yesterday was 9/11 and I missed it, didn’t make the connection until this morning. I was busy with Covid-19, a sputtering, failing economy and wild fires in the west. It is peak hurricane season as well and storm names are up to ’Sally’ and ’Teddy’ in the alphabet. I don’t need a reminded for 9/11. My love of country is sufficient, it has legs of its own, doesn’t need to be wrapped in the flag or carry a cross.

WASÍCU: DAY 177

 

There is plenty to write about. The world (planet) has kicked it up a notch with climate change, civilization dealing with pandemic, the virus itself and the overreaching problems the disease creates; I have more than enough to write about. But it ain’t easy, ain’t always what it seems. I never make mistakes. I thought I did once but I was wrong.

I recently took part in a virtual, zoom meeting where all participants supposedly shared similar social/political values and points of view. I can’t say that we didn’t but trying to find common ground was like throwing jello at the wall, trying to make something stick. 

In the 1990’s I was fixed on the history and beliefs of indigenous, 1st Nation people. Although every nation and tribe has its own unique culture, they share many common roots. One view that stuck with me was; regardless of where you are, at that particular time, your relative location is at the center of the universe. As you move through place and time, the universe keeps you centered.

I was not Nativo, I knew that, would never be native and trying to capture even a sliver of that identify for myself would be at best naive, pissing in the wind. According to my friend Duncan Sings-alone, even high percentage mezcladas (mixed bloods) struggle to recapture the essence of that former life. Even then, all they get is a glimpse and that has to be decoded and translated. What could a Wasícu (White man) hope to glean from remnants of a culture that White men had tried to exterminate! Still, if I can borrow from that sensibility, something that transcends the rift, if I can frame it with balance when I have none, if I can lean on it for the sake of the mystery; then maybe I can benefit by osmosis. 

As a Wasícu, the center of the universe is of course a metaphor. Everything is scattered around me in all directions for as far as I can reach. Most of it is incomplete or muddled, leaving me unfulfilled but like my friend, all I can hope for is a glimpse. The people at my zoom meeting were so sure they knew all there was to know, I could neither comprehend nor make myself understood. But it does support an notion that we can only come to each other from where we are at the time and what that means. Most Nativos identify as ‘Two-Leggeds’, that their place in creation is with the animals. Western culture is too proud to go there. Maybe it’s that pride that alienates me from my kinsmen. To my thinking, taking pride is no more, no less than an unmerited,  self righteous indulgence.

All we get are nerve impulses that shortcut the thinking network on their way to having meaning. To suggest that all brains interpret those impulses the same would be to deny the role diversity plays and I find that hard to accept. At the meeting, questions were all rhetorical, for the sake of irony. Nobody was seeking insight, only reinforcement of a predetermined bias, the very flaw they so despised in others. I am reminded that we, all of us, we respond to an emotional stimulus long before we consult reason. Even then, it is near impossible to over rule strong feelings with a logical argument. I am just a ‘Two-Legged’ and I accept my limitations. In the end, I am likewise ruled by my feelings. But I think maybe, my view is from the center of the universe and it requires looking in all directions. They are on the boundary looking in and casting judgment is easier from out there.