El Gringoqueño

All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.

Page 45 of 51

Angry with God?

February 4, 2004 /

Are you angry with God? Do you look around at all the injustice, hatred, and pain in the world and ask yourself, how could a God that is all love and compassion allow this to happen. How can He let us live lives filled with such sorrow and torment? How could He let my loved ones die such cruel deaths? How could he let rapists and murderers steal our little children and do such awful things? How could God let beasts such as Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, the Black Plague exist in this world where he lets his children play.

Why not baby proof the place a bit?

It’s a simple question, possibly the simplest question ever asked. It’s incongruous to us why God would let such awful thing coexist with his beloved children. Would you tell your children to run out and play by the in-ground pool. Oops, you fell in and drowned. Free will… what’re ya gonna do? You fell in. I told you to be careful. I told you to take care. I guess it was meant to be.

And it burns us up. It makes us angry. Does it make you angry?

I was doing my weekly session at the juvenile prison last week and I had occasion to express to my young pupil a bit of wisdom that came to me in a flash. It was inspired by these children, some of them murderers, car thieves, drug addicts, robbers, and petty crooks. It was inspired by what I saw in their faces, their innocent baby faces.

"You see," I said, "It’s like a child with its father. You have any kids?"

"No," he said.

"Cousins, nephews, nieces?" I asked. He said that he did, but I realized that he might not get what I was about to say. I’ll try it anyway, I thought. Can’t hurt.

I asked him if he saw babies crying because they were hungry, tired, or needed a diaper change. I asked him if he had ever tried to explain, or saw someone explain to the baby why it was crying. "Did the baby respond properly? Did the baby stop crying because it now understood. The irritation, its angst, now made sense, so it calmed down. He laughed and said no. Of course not. His laughter lifted me. He was going to get this, I thought.

It’s interesting to note, that parents will never ever be able to fully explain, allay all fears, take on all burdens from their children. In adolescence, parents attempt to explain the feelings of awkwardness and rejection as normal. Everybody feels that way, they say. Meanwhile, the child thinks or says that they couldn’t possibly understand. How could they? How could they understand the pain I feel right now? I’m living it. You parents can’t understand what it’s like.

Every time a parent tries to explain, or convey experience and wisdom to a child, the child rejects it. You won’t understand until you live it. You will try to explain it to your children but they will reject it. All you can do is be there to pick up the pieces and try to cajole, motivate, and guide. All you can do it change the diaper, bring the food, soothe the restless nights and hold them when they cry.

If you believe in a God with whom to be angry, can you at least see through that clouded consciousness of your childhood and see a father who wants to help? Can you at least realize for a brief instant how we can’t possibly understand what’s to come next, and by next, I mean tomorrow? Can you see yourself as a child who cries and doesn’t know why?

If I know anything about being a father, it’s that when I hold Olaia or Jaimito, I would do anything to take away their pain, their frustration, but I can’t. I can’t because there is no way in the universe I can convey experience. And what is experience if not a combination of pain, joy, suffering, and happiness?

You don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water do you? It’s okay, though, if you’re angry with God, I’ll give you a hug if you need it. I understand. I empathize. I hurt too, but I know someone who hurts more. He’s been locked up at the age of 17. He has no father. His uncle is in prison. He best friend was gunned down. He has no education. He’s poor and a drug addict.

In Observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

January 19, 2004 /

‘Cause
somebody has too. It seems in Puerto Rico, that this day passes without
so much as a glance. Only Federal facilities are off today, while most
businesses (including banks) comport themselves as if it was a normal
workday.

Hispanics in the U.S. complain that THEY don’t
have a DAY. They ask why the influential Hugo Chávez who fought for the
rights of immigrant workers doesn’t have a day… as if everyone needs
a DAY, a special day to call their very own, to love him and pet him,
to squeeze him and hug him. Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day just a token
black holiday?

Our honoring of Martin Luther King Jr. is not
an acquiescence to black pressure, an ethnic hero of choice for those
darker Americans so that they may feel like they are somebody. I shout
an emphatic NO! even though the road to a national holiday was frought
with much debate over this very topic. He’s just a black leader. He’s a
womanizer. How can we put him on a pedestal with the likes of
Washington, Lincoln? America finally "gave in," and bit by bit they
adopted the national holiday that was to become Martin Luther King Jr.
Day. I imagine there are many still grumbling, and I wonder if white
folks don’t like the feeling that maybe there’s a black man telling
them what to do.

Folks, Martin Luther King Jr. was not a
great Black American, he was a great American. Martin Luther King Jr.
restored OUR sullied, tattered, torn constitution to what it originally
intended. Martin Luther King Jr. restored your rights, whatever your
ethnicity. He restored your dignity whatever you call yourself. He gave
back to you what was stolen from you. He fought, suffered, and died for
YOU, you Americans, you Hispanic Americans, you Native Americans, you
Chinese, Korean, Philipino, Croatian, Polish, German, Italian, Irish,
French, Scandanavian, Russian, Indian, and Arab Americans. Martin
Luther King Jr. wrestled with the soul of a nation, a lethargic broken
lost shadow of its former self and fought to restore its heart, its
core. He struggled to return to YOU what you deserved, what every
person deserves.

I say to every American citizen that did not
take time to reflect on what Martin Luther King Jr. did for you
individually, shame on you! Shame on your shortsightedness. Shame on
your selfishness. Shame on your cluelessness.

The arc of
the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Martin Luther
King Jr. pulled many a long night by himself, hands bloody, arms weary,
against apathy, hatred, bigotry, and even physical death. He pulled and
pulled and pulled a sinking America kicking and screaming back into
focus, back toward justice, back toward righteousness,

For you.

The Perfect Storm

January 16, 2004 /

1913_storm.jpgLaura was out in a meeting today, so I was alone with the kids, the
two little delightful munchkins. They were getting antsy to get out, so
around four thirty, we decided to go to the park. I put on their shoes
and got them their clothes. Jaimito was particularly impatient. "Go go
go gogo….waaaaaaaaa."

"Jaimito, Daddy has to go pee pee. We’re still going to the park. I’ll be right back."

Suddenly from out of nowhere, a breeze picked up. I felt the back of
my neck tingle. It was a sinking feeling. I was miles from home and I
knew there was no one to save me.

I answered my frantically ringing cell phone. "James O’Malley."

«Hey James, Jose Camacho»

«How are you, Jose, how can I help you.»

«There seems to be a problem with our bandwidth. I’m not getting
access to the Internet, and my provider said that they are not showing
any connectivity problems with our site.»

«Hmmm,» I said as I did the pee pee dance. Damn! I lamented, tech support.

By then, the wind was blowing like a 2 year old lying on the floor
throwing a tantrum. I knew it was bad. Really bad. None of the hatches
was battened… or whatever you do with hatches. «Let’s take a look,» I
said as I logged in via secure shell. «You look good from here. I don’t
see a problem.» I was puzzled. I asked him about his machines, checked
IP’s, checked the web caching proxy. Nothing. I sent him running around
checking cables, different machines, different web-sites. Nothing.
Jaimito was still wailing.

Oh my God, the Cape wasn’t where I thought it was. I realized I was
in the wrong machine. «Jose, you won’t believe this. I was logged into
another client’s machine. Forget everything I said.» I felt like an
idiot, but we quickly got back to work. No time to fret. This was life
or death. I got him to go to the machine and log in. I wanted him to
run an IP traffic program so we could analyse from where the flood of
traffic originated. «Log in, type i-p-t-r-a-f and hit enter.» He typed
it wrong. I spelled it again and I got him into the program.

Turn into the storm, I kept repeating to myself, but it’s tough.
When you are being buffeted from all sides, you can’t tell from where
the winds are blowing. Suddenly a big one came crashing over the port
side. My cell phone started to beep. Arrgh, low battery. I quickly
found a charger cord and plugged myself in. I was now tied down on
deck. I wasn’t going anywhere. If the boat sank, I was going to go with
it. I still had to use the bathroom and I could no longer see what the
kids were doing, and the mosquitos were ravaging my legs.

I continued to lead him through menus and commands, having him read
to me the program’s output letter by letter. Every mistake costs
valuable time. What could be going on here, I thought? The machine is
spewing out tons of traffic, but I can’t log in. Normally, even when
traffic is heavy, the encrypted shell will at least give me a login
prompt. It looks like a ICMP flood from a virus worm, but I have that
blocked at the firewall. What is going on!

«Check the protocols on the outgoing connections,» I said. «I bet
it’s a large email attachment. And I bet it’s going over the IP-sec
encrypted tunnel.» Sure enough that’s what it was, encrypted
communications between nodes on their VPN. IP-sec packets take
precedence over normal Internet traffic, so if you flood the tunnel,
traffic outside receives a lower priority. «I bet someone sent a huge
email attachment and it’s stuffing up the tunnel.»

Jaimito is quiet now. I don’t hear him, but as any sailor knows,
that is the time to be afraid, be very afraid. «Hold on,» I told Jose.
I put the phone down and made my way to our bedroom. The floor was
sticky. Odd. The devastation I saw would bring a grown man to tears:
lipstick, makeup orange juice everywhere. The storm wrought more damage
than I could have imagined. "Jaimito!!" He looked up at me with guilty
eyes and handed me the smashed lipstick as if to say, I was just
looking to give this to you, Daddy. "Oh, you little boy!" I said in a
stern voice, which as any parent knows is more than sufficient to
initiate a full blown guilt cry. Jaimito started bawling again. Such a
good little repentant boy. I love him. But now was not the time, the
storm was coming again, and I needed to get back to my station.

I picked up the phone. «Jose, are you there? Good, now we see that
it’s a large email attachment. Let’s try to delete it from the mail
queue.» Type the command /root/qmHandel -l | less, then look for the
unique id of the email in the queue. Then type /root/qmHandel -dxxxx.
Rinse, lather and repeat until the queue is empty. I quickly realized
that the task was too complicated to attempt in such a tumult. «Let’s
just kill the whole email server, » I said. «Type k-i-l-l-a-l-l -9
q-m-a-i-l—s-e-n-d… no, not sent… s-e-n-d. Okay, got it. Did it
return an error. No? Okay, hit the up arrow and repeat the command
until you see it say "no process found." » This carried on for a while.
Mistakes, corrections, return to the command. I would leave the phone
make a quick circle of the house to see that hatches were battened and
attempt the log in remotely. «I’m in!»
I exclaimed. «Okay, that’s what it was, Jose. Let me go into the queue
and delete the e-mails. I’ll have it fixed in a few minutes.» I hung up
the phone and breathed a sigh of relief. I ran to the bathroom before I
exploded and Jaimito started wailing again as if to say, I waited all
that time and you’re still not going to take me to the park?! Poor
little thing. Of course, Olaia was a little angel, she stayed calm
throughout the perfect storm.

Having Kids isn’t the End of Fun

January 1, 2004 /

It’s just the beginning.

Remember
when you used to go out when you were younger? You would go out to the
parties, dances, merriment, and then you would come home to the quiet.
Well, when you have kids, the party comes home and stays like a
European house guest. It runs 24/7. It’s like one of those Rave parties
that go on and on and on. It never stops. It never lets up.

So
before you think that parents are old, boring, and un-fun, just
remember, we party harder than twenty somethings. We party harder than
college students. We party harder than high school students.

We go OUT to relax!

Animal House

December 6, 2003 /

jaimito_fall_2003_0022.jpgJaimito, is a little party animal. There
is no doubt. He takes after his mommy. I guess that’s why I like
hanging around the two of them so much. In college, Laura was the
nucleus of all fun, our circle of friends orbiting like electrons
attracted to her positive energy. In all reality, I’m just along for
the ride. Sometimes it’s a bit bumpy, but oh the fun! Couple that with
the fact that she’s a good stable element, and you’ve got a perfect
party.

Jaimto is definitely Laura’s son.

He’s
been saying something for the past month or so. It sounds like
"Go-qool." He says it so emphatically and precisely, that is, the exact
same way every time. I, for the life of me, haven’t been able to figure
out what he has been trying to communicate. Today, as we were getting
up, he repeated it while Laura was putting on his shirt.

"Oh, you want to go bye-bye," she said.

"Is
that what he’s been saying?" I said incredulously. "He’s saying go out
or go bye-bye? Geez, all this time, I never figured it out. It was
never on my radar screen that he could possibly be expressing a desire
to go out, to get out, to go bye-bye." And my mind wandered back to all
times he’d said it. He’d been bored, looking for excitement.

"Daddy, I’m tired of my toys, I want some REAL ACTION. I WANT TO PARRRRRRRTTTTTYYYYY!!!"

"Hehe,
well I guess that explains it. He is your son, hon. Since, I’m not such
an initiator of partying, it never dawned on me that he could be
wishing for action, to go bye-bye." I shake my head, "Well, if you two
come up with something fun to do, you’ll let me know, right? I don’t
want to be left behind."

More Amazing Olaia Insights

December 4, 2003 /

Olaia_nov_2003.jpgI was heading out after 5pm to
replace the mail server for Lord Electric and took along Olaia as my
little assistant. She’s always such good company, so helpful and
charming. This was probably going to be a long boring replacement, as
it involved pulling the server (a 2U unit mounted in a rack), stripping
out the 4 year old parts, and installing the new blazing fast
processor, memory, motherboard, and RAID disks. It sounds simple, but
it never really is. I am continually amazed at how long simple computer
tasks end up taking sometimes. It’s a simple transplant. Install a new
and updated Linux system, and then copy over all the configuration
files.

So here I am, heading out with Olaia. "Daddy, " she says, "People are always more important than flags."

"Huh,
uh," I stammered, glancing out the window and noting what she saw, an
American and a Puerto Rican flag on two flag poles. "Wow, little girl,
you are so wise. Do you know that most people go their whole lives
without realizing that? You are amazing. You know at the age of five
what some people don’t know at 85."

Olaia, grinned in the back seat. "Yeah, Daddy, am I smart?"

"Oh, yes, you are very smart, but more… you’re wise and you care about people. Where did you learn that?"

"I dunno."

"Well,
you’re too much, sweetie. Did you know that people fight over those
flags. Some people think one is better than the other and they try to
fight about which one is bigger, higher, lower, or more important? And
you know what they should know. They shouldn’t fight over flags."

She continued grinning bashfully.

The
server installation did not go as expected (it never does, so I should
have expected it, right?). Olaia stayed with me, coloring, and handing
me tools when I needed them.

Once, she brought me a cup of water from the water cooler. "Here Daddy, I brought you some water because maybe you’re thirsty."

"Oh,
thank you, " I absentmindedly said, engrossed in the guts of the
computer and some board or cable that would not fit where it was
supposed to.

"Daddy, aren’tcha gonna drink your water."

"Huh? Oh, yeah." I had forgotten I was holding it. "Hmmm, thank you Olaia. That was delicious.

Olaia
grinned, wrinkling up her face bashfully. She hung out with me until
Laura came with dinner, a nice Wendy’s triple cheeseburger, my
favorite. I ended up getting to bed around 3am, and as I drove home, I
smiled thinking about my little wise assistant.

Sun Tzu and his The Art of WAR

December 3, 2003 /

suntzu_sm.jpgThe Art of War, although often
studied within the business world, is frequently misunderstood
and incorrectly applied by those not versed in the language of war.
I have read two different translations of Sun Tzu’s The Art of
War. It is a fascinating treatise of
what is required to win when losing is not an option. As a military
man, I have studied it not just for its lessons of the battlefield,
but for its gems of wisdom on leadership and the true cost of war. I
didn’t stop there, however. General George S. Patton’s writings have
(after reading Sun Tzu) some amazing similarities.
I don’t know if Patton was a disciple of Sun Tzu or if he arrived at
some of the same conclusions but nonetheless here are examples:

  • Sun Tzu: Now, when your weapons
    are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your
    treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of
    your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert
    the consequences that must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of
    stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with
    long delays.

  • Patton: A good solution applied
    with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes
    later.

  • Sun Tzu: Do not repeat the tactics
    which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated
    by the infinite variety of circumstances.

  • Patton: Good tactics can save even
    the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best
    strategy.

There are many similarities in the
philosophies of each, and while Sun Tzu primarily wrote of
battlefield tactics, he also has some to say about leadership and
discipline, moving men, and accomplishing goals.

Patton’s writings incorporate much of
Sun Tzu, but diverge a bit from the minutia
of battlefield tactics from the pithy "Go forward!" to the
sublime "It’s the unconquerable soul of man and not the nature
of the weapon he uses, that ensures victory."

The modern William Edwards Demming and
Walter A. Shewhart took these tenants and expanded upon then further,
creating their revolution in quality control during WWII and beyond.
"Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and
service." "Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve
quality." "Drive out fear."

Then came another student, by the name
of Jack Welch, CEO of GE. Almost, a modern day Patton in the
boardroom, he transformed the culture of GE from bloated,
bureaucratic, and slow moving to an empowering,
nimble entity where every employee was an agent for change with
responsibilities and authority.

If Sun Tzu could be summed up into one
word it would be "deception."

Patton would be "action."

Demming is "purpose."

Welch is "transformation."

Each of these great leaders and
tacticians built upon the last, grew, learned, adapted, bettered.
They used the tools they had at hand to accomplish the mission. I
would hope that humanity has learned something in over 2000 years,
but all too often, today’s upwardly mobile disciples of Sun Tzu’s
great meta-tactics of conquest and destruction apply his teaching of
deception to the widest possible swath. The Art of War is a
square peg in a round hole. The Art of War does not lead to
victory in the corporate world, and I will tell you why.

You can see Sun Tzu at work all around
in today’s society. Business is war. Co-workers quietly focus their
ambitions on upward mobility, concealing their movements within the
company as they maneuver their way into an
advantageous position. Whether intentional or not, much of reality
TV draws on Sun Tzu’s teachings of misdirection and deception. If
you are weak, appear strong. If you are strong appear weak. More or
less if you are on an episode of survivor, and you are strong, that
is, if you have the advantage, hide it. Keep it secret. Do not let
your enemy know you have such power. If you are weak, you must be
careful not to let your enemy know. You must study your enemy and
trick him into error. Get him reacting to you instead of seizing the
advantage you know he has.

This works on reality TV. It is always
the most deceptive person, the one who disguises his true intentions
until the last possible instant. This is the person that convinces
his adversaries up is down, black is white, and advantage is
disadvantage. This is the person that wins, not the most likable,
not the smartest, not the strongest. The person that wins is
generally not the one with the obvious assets. In fact, it could be
the fat weird abrasive gay guy. The winner is the one that most
convincingly hides his true face, obfuscates
his inner strategy, and conceals his movements with rigorous
discipline.

Deception is fine, when the goal is
victory in an adversarial arena. That is, there is really nothing
collaborative about reality TV. Sure, the producers will give the
group some common task in which they need to cooperate, but it’s
really just for the fun of the viewer. Make no bones about it, these
shows are war, everybody looking for advantage at every possible
moment. Reality it is not, at least no reality in which I would want
to live.

The real shame is that we see that Sun
Tzu thrives in this arena, and we attempt to apply it to the world in
which we live and breath. We say to our young children, "What
you see on TV is only make believe." And "Don’t try this at
home." As adults we should know that Coyote could never operate
as he does and expect to succeed.

Yet we fail to see that Sun Tzu is
ill-suited to the real world, in fact, as Gen Patton found out, not
wanted either. Within the confines of business and society, we
actually hurt society by focusing on "winning at all costs,"
deceiving our co-workers while we maneuver for position in the
corporate structure, furthering our personal ambitions to the
exclusion of others or the wellness of the company (think Enron,
Worldcom).

They say, "Well, that’s the real
world, folks. If you can’t handle it stay at home, and leave
business to the big boys, " and they will puff themselves up
like a little male lizard flaring its neck up for an appearance of
formability. You play warrior, but warrior
you are not. You would treat your fellows as adversaries, pretended
foes upon whom to project your energies. You deceive, because you
seek your prize. You seek your victory. You seek your fortune, like
a great warrior predator strutting upon the grassy safari, beholden
to no one, dependent upon no one, answering to no one.

Now, pardon me if I burst your bubble,
but that is NOT "the real world." The little lizard world,
I described is a world divorced of humanity, the savage world of the
animal kingdom, the horrendous world of war and violence. Human
beings have evolved to be cooperative creatures. We didn’t get
speed. We didn’t get strength. We didn’t get size, or a short
gestation period, or quick maturation, or flight, or or or. We got
shafted in every possible way according to the laws of nature as we
see them, as Sun Tzu saw them. We need each other for even the most
basic of necessities.

We did get one thing, though, that sets
us apart, on the top, at the crest of the wave of life, the pinnacle.
We got love. Love calls us to others’ needs, love inspires us to
help rather than hurt. Love is compassion, empathy. Love is what
takes away personal fear and allows us to trust, allows us to work
together for a common goal.

Reality TV is an perversion of our
natural social order, an order where we should collaborate rather
than compete, an order where our goals are mutual rather than
individual. Love is not to be about individual satisfaction,
gratification, or needs. It is not about you, just as people are not
just put here on earth for you. The sooner you realize that Sun Tzu
was the master of being successful in an aberrated world, the master
of hell, guru of a perverted state, the less you will attempt to
apply his principles to this world of creation and potential.

For if it is in this pit of fire where
you reach your potential, where you find success, then it will
spread, it will consume those not strong enough to resist its flames.
If you become master of the flames, you damn humanity, your
children, your fellows to the same torment. The weak shall be
consumed, and you will say to them, "you were not strong
enough." A thousand souls will lay scattered upon the landscape
in various states of starvation and despair. A few tens will
survive, wild-eyed fearless, standing defiant amidst
the flames. To survive in this world they have had to give up their
humanity, leave their compassion behind, to stand finally alone with
nary a soul to raise a cup of water to their burning lips. In the
end, they shall finish their days alone, kept from the banquet to writhe
in the street wailing and gnashing their teeth.

Nightmare Scenario

November 29, 2003 /

I had trouble falling asleep last night, probably the late dinner
and the excitement of Olaia’s sleep-over with her cousins, Mariam and
Robertito. Whatever it was, I tossed and turned before falling into a
shallow slumber. I began to have a disquieting nightmare.

I
find myself in a hospital, with rows of patients. It’s strangely bright
and open, almost as if it’s in my house. Something is happening,
something big, tragic. I must get my family out, I think to myself. Out
of where and from what, I can’t say, but there’s this urgency to move
or run or something. There is this hurried hopeful movement all around.
Something is coming, but it can be dealt with, or so everyone believes.

I
snap from the dream briefly and focus on my sleeping self. I’m asleep,
I halfway realize, and then as if to make sense of the disconnect, my
dream seizes upon the realization and weaves it into the plot.

You
are asleep. You know who comes for you in your sleep. There is some
realization that there is a Freddy Crouger, nightmare type scenario
playing out, and even though I’ve never seen a single slasher movie in
my life, I’m now in one. He’s coming for you, and there is nowhere to
hide. I choke, the realization coming over me. There is only a split
second of angst for myself, as I realize that I am in control. But the
rest? These people here don’t know they are safe, that they are in
control. I begin to run around, making tons of noise. "I know who you
are!! You can’t hurt these people. You can’t hurt me. You’ll all be
okay," I shout. I’m getting mad now. I want to find this character and
tear his head off.

Suddenly, I’m accompanied by a middle-aged Mia
Sara, Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off." We’re
walking inside a plush carpeted hotel. The hallways are wide and tall,
and everything looks like it’s covered with various earth-toned crushed
velvet. She is talking to me, in a sort of evil villain/philosopher
tone. "You will have a choice," she says. She is communicating with me
in some way beyond talking. I am filled with feelings, emotions,
anxiousness at what is to come. I’m unsure why I am here or what I am
to do.

"Answer me truthfully," I say to her, for some reason knowing she cannot lie, "am I in Hell?"

"Yes."
And she dissappears. I follow the corridor and exit into a dark street.
It still feels closed in, like a movie set of Las Vegas. I am drenched
in seeminess. It’s not unpleasant, just drenched in some sort of
manifestation of selfishness, lust, greed. Women proposition me on the
street in their high heels, fishnets, and bustieres. Street hustlers
call my name, with gay grins and bejeweled hands. "Comeon, wanna try
yer luck." It’s tempting. Looks like it might be fun. Just for second,
I think…. no feel, this isn’t so bad. It’s sad, but not evil as I had
imagined it.

I am traveling now through the streets, flying,
running, I don’t know which. I absorb the scene before me with ever
increasing ownership, and I keep accelerating until it is all so much
blur or images, faces, seeminess, sex, greed, gluttony, envy,
aimlessness, despair, and loneliness. I boldly shout to them, "Repent!!
Repent!! Jesus – God loves you! You are all loved by God." I fix on
myself, and how I sound. Repent, evil doers was not my intent. I hear
in my head the cries of a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher, facing
his congregation wagging his finger at the unworthy. My feeling as I
fly through the wasteland and all the emptiness is not that they are
evil, but that they are lost, worthy of love. "Repent!" is a call to
reach out their hands, and to not let their despair keep them from
redemption. I am aware I am in Hell, and I know with every fiber of my
being that Hell cannot exist where there is a willingness to be
redeemed. If the love of the Creator is infinite, there is no possible
reason for these poor creatures to live in the dark unless they choose
to. And no one, I know, would willingly choose to give up being loved.
I will deliver the message, "Repent, and ye shall be saved!!" I am
filled with such strength, force of will, to be saying such things. I
want to save them all, share with them what I know. No matter how far
you have fallen, you can still be saved. I know this.

And on a
dark street I come to an instant stop. In front of me are three figures
ready to accost me. I take a bold step toward them to deliver my
message. They immediately transform into monsters dripping blood,
fingers stretched out in contorted razor sharp claws, eyes rolled back,
all night of the living dead-like. They had been normal human figures a
moment earlier, but suddenly turn hideously grotesque.

I shrink
for a millisecond. I am startled, and fear for a brief instant, but it
isn’t fear of dying or being attacked, it is a point of infinite
revulsion, like all possible nausea compacted into an impossibly short
period of time. Get away from me, I think.

And as quickly as it
had come, the next moments fill me with ever increasing compassion and
I say, "fill me" because I don’t get the sense that I was the one doing
it. I become bolder and bolder. My speed picks up again, and I race
toward the figure on my right at an impossible rate. I embrace his
torso and speed off, my arms wrapped as tightly as I can possibly
imagine around his breast, him facing away from me, my chin on his
shoulder. "Don’t worry, He loves you." And my embrace strengthens like
my life depends on it. I will hold onto you.

I ask him how his
life had been in this place. Had it been tough. He tells me at first it
wasn’t so hard, but then there were those that beat him. He had been
kicked down and bloodied, living on the street, in the cold for so
long. "It’s not so bad." I ask him what it was like before, in life.
"The same," he says.

The night fades, replaced by a brightly
lit plaza of intricate stone work. I come to a stop and release this
person to whom I had clung to tightly.

"Sorry, about that," I say wiping spittle off his shoulder.

And
I awake in a sweat, hot as hell, my pillow wet from drool. Yeech. I
adjust my covers and sigh. "Hon, I just had the weirdest dream. I don’t
even know if I can call it a dream."

Parenting in the Digital Age

November 28, 2003 /

With technology has come a multitude of conveniences, time savers, and
capabilities of which our primitive ancestors could never have
conceived. Take for example, the instant message. It is instantaneous,
travels at the speed of light to its intended recipient, delivering
important potentially critical information at the click of a button. It
can be sent across the world, around the block, or to the next room.

Laura at 15:01:18: Jaimito is poopie

Jim at 15:01:43: Roger, I’ll change him.

Toxic waste disposal emergencies such as the one above could have not
been addressed with such efficiency before the days of IM. Thank the
Lord!

The Walking Lady

November 25, 2003 /

This morning I did my two mile walk
with Jaimito in his jogger stroller. He usually sings to me, babbling
and carrying on with a musical tune. He likes music. He’s always
dancing and singing. The Wiggles, an Australian kids troupe, on the
Disney channel are his favorite characters. or the "-ggles"
as he says. Today, though he didn’t sing, just happily sucked his
bottle of juice, pulling it from his mouth to point out sights of
interest along the way. We saw trees, palm trees, a cement truck and
an airplane. Jaimito loves airplanes, or "a-bi" as he says.
I think it’s a cross between airplane and avión, in spanish.
"A-bo, a-bo," he says turning his head up to me, pointing
to a tree. I assume "a-bo" is arbol or "tree" in
spanish. Wow, kids sure are good on the economy of language. Such
clever creatures. Yeah, Daddy, why do you have all these distinct
words. All I need to do is make a sound and point. See? Easy as pie.

Jaimito and I got back from our little
walk, and had some breakfast. He loves fruit Kixs cereal. I don’t
complain, because he can’t make a mess with it, and after all, it is
"Kid tested, Mother approved." He loves to share with me,
digging into the little cup of cereal with his dexterous deditos and
feeding me the purple ones. Why purple? I have asked him the same
question myself – perhaps when he can talk, he will reveal to me his
hidden agenda.

Yogurt is his other favorite. Cereal
and yogurt… ah, the stuff of which dreams are made, ahh, but,
Daddy, I need some of your cereal too, or actually just the milk.

Daddy likes to eat Honey Bunches of
Oats, with chocolate chips sprinkled on top. I’m bad, I know, but
little Mr. So-and-so likes to mooch the milk from me. He makes his
dramatic "mmmmmmp" sounds and smiles at me after each
successful raid into my zone, pushing his pushy wiggle-puss into my
bowl. I call him my "Moochie" or "Cachetero"
(cheeky-one) on account of his bulging cheeks.

This has become our morning ritual.

After coffee, I checked my email,
morning geek news (slashdot.org),
world news (www.msnbc.com), and
settled into work on Altabox 4.0.

This afternoon, we had a lunch date
with a local state senator to build a strategy to communicate our
vision for the tech sector with what will be, most assuredly the next
governor of Puerto Rico. The rest of the morning was uneventful, and
we headed out for our lunch.

I usually drive, because although Laura
is a good and competent driver, she’s got a lead foot. The new and
improved phlegmatic Jim, has become a passive slowpoke, as it is the
only way I can feel sane. Thanks Dad. I was pulling out of our
sub-division when the car in front of me just stopped. A woman got
out and ran across the street. Huh? I honked, what the hell is she
doing? And just as I honked, I saw a crumpled shape lying in a ditch
on the other side of the street. I pulled to the side, and leaped
from the car to screams and clamor.

Apparently there was a slight accident,
two cars had hit each other, but caught up in it was an old woman, a
pedestrian who was walking along the side of the road. As the two
idiots drivers fought and fretted about their situation, the poor
woman lay bleeding in a drainage ditch, water flowing freely around
her.

I raced over to her, fixated on this
poor figure laying in the blood. Is she dead? I didn’t see the
accident, so I didn’t know how severe it was. It wasn’t clear exactly
what had happened. Did she fall? Was she hit? I reached her limp
form, and checked immediately to see if she was alive, breathing. I
felt awkward. This stuff only happens in the movies, doesn’t it? I
was shaking, the adrenaline had kicked in. I couldn’t help it. I was
mentally calm and in control, but my body had other ideas as it
decided to go into crisis mode. The people standing around me are all
offered "helpful" suggestions. Don’t move her, was pretty
much all they could say, I guess they were content to just stand
there and gawk while this bleeding woman lay in a ditch.

I touched her shoulder and gave her
upper torso a little tug. First thing you do in a crisis is talk to
the patient. Find out if they are okay, if they can tell you where it
hurts or where they are hurt. First aid is trained frequently in the
Army, repetitively, so that in the moment you don’t have to think.

Say there’s an explosion, your buddy
goes down, and you immediately start first aid, checking limbs,
tearing open clothes, thinking about tourniquets. "Hey dumbass,
I’m fine. Just stunned, check out the rest of the guys." If the
patient can talk, they can help you out. Basic stuff, but you’d be
amazed how often people forget.

So this woman, was stunned, a little
groggy. I recognized her from the first. She’s who, growing up in N.
Country, St. Louis, we all knew as the "Walking Lady," a
woman seen at all hours of the day, in all seasons walking around,
going shopping, running all her errands on foot. Here, lying in a
drainage ditch was our very own, "Walking Lady," Paquita as
she is called. Laura and I wondered if she was homeless, her
weathered and somewhat tattered appearance fit the bill. She lives in
our neighborhood, however. I see her most mornings as I head out on
my morning bike rides. We usually exchange smiles.

I checked her head. Looks okay, she’s
got a cut across her eyebrow. That’s where ALL the blood was coming
from. Yeah, I remember those injuries all too well. Cut above the eye
bleeds like crazy. You look like Carrie. I check around her head,
talking to her. "Does it hurt any where else?" She’s still
groggy, I can’t hear her. "You know me," I say to her,
"It’s me, from the bicycle. We meet each other every morning
when I go out on my bicycle."

She smiled. I smiled back, and imagined
myself, this huge gringo covered in blood crouched in a ditch holding
this ninety pound little old lady, stroking her head.

I enlisted the aid of a by-stander to
move her from the ditch into the shade. I was amazed at how hard it
was to lift her small frame out of the ditch. I stumbled and stepped
on her hand. I felt terrible about that. Poor thing. A limp weight is
hard to lift. Jeez. A worker from the Energy Authority, trained in
first aid arrived at the scene. He had his complete first aid kit,
oxygen, bandages, blood pressure device, etc. He went to work, while
I told her jokes and held her hand. I made her smile as her blood
pressure and pulse came back normal. "Ah, as healthy as a twenty
year old," I said.

It was super hot in the noon day,
equatorial sun. I was dressed for a business lunch, and not only was
I drenched in blood, I was pouring sweat like a thoroughbred. A man
began to fan me with a piece of cardboard he found on the road. Ah,
that felt good.

The ambulance arrived finally, and I
got out of the way. They rolled her onto the stretcher and hoisted
her up. I stayed with her to see her off. "Paquita, may you get
better soon. We’ll see each other next week, you walking, me on my
bicycle." She smiled and we parted ways.

In the end, I didn’t do anything
really. I would have been more prepared to do CPR or mouth to mouth,
but I felt good for having reacted so quickly and taking charge while
everybody else fretted and stood idle, especially the two idiots in
the cars that caused the accident in the first place. Like I said,
though, I didn’t really do anything, but today, the 25th of November
2003, I eased someone’s pain and made a new friend.

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