All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.
Laura(emphatically): Olaia, you have to eat your ice cream cone from the sides.
Olaia (irritated): Nooooooo, I want to eat it from the top.
Laura: Olaia, you have to listen to Mommy.
Me: Yes, little girl you have to stop saying "no" all the time.
Olaia (questioningly): Yes… I want to eat it from the top?
Laura and I: (Guffaw, fall down laughing).
I said goodbye to my students at the Juvenile Detention Center last
week (Tuesday). They had a day out from the prison at a local Catholic
University, a day of swimming, exercise, and enjoyment, capped off with
a prayer vigil in the university chapel.
The project is called "Tutores en Acción" (Tutors in Action) de San
Ignacio (our parish). I saw an announcement in a Sunday bulletin last
year that was calling for volunteers to tutor in a prison. It spoke to
me. Who among us is more lost than those that have fallen so far to the
wayside. If there is anybody that needs companionship, tutoring,
mentoring, or somebody to care, it is they. Anyway, I wanted to do it,
but hadn’t the time or the motivation to get off my ass and actually
execute. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or so the
saying goes.
One Sunday, the sermon was about being ordinary during Ordinary Time
(season of the liturgical year). "Do you want to be ordinary?" was the
call. Hell no, and I signed up. As it turned out the semester was just
beginning on Tuesday, so it was fortuitous.
I ended up with two students, Manuel Nuñez and Juan Luis Rivera,
because there weren’t enough of us to go around. I helped them with
their english (just to do something), but mostly we talked, learning
from each other. I helped give them a perspective outside of the
streets, gangs, and limited opportunities that face them every day in
their ambient. Sometimes when all you see around you is a particular
behavior or life path, it doesn’t seem so bad, rather, it seems right.
It isn’t until you see how other people live, get a bit of perspective,
possibly step outside of your cultural limitations, see new vistas,
that you see how small your life has been… or rather how much bigger
it could be. I think once you take that first step outside of what you
have known, it creates a hunger that never ends. I want to know more. I
want to become more. Basically, we hit that point over and over and
over all semester.
At one point, Manuel got into some trouble with a urine test. Perhaps
he had reverted to drugs, or something, but bascially got caught
switching urine samples. Anyway, he received another 4 months of
encarceration for this. He nearly despaired completely. I noticed a
change in his demeaner, he became more withdrawn, melancholy, angry.
We had a long heart to heart in which he expressed his axiety of being
in this place. "No puedo," (I can’t) he would say, as if to say four
months more would break him. He expressed his anger, his weakness to
become enraged (as one week his black eye confirmed). It was costing
him more time in this purgatorial realm.
"Manuel, you need to stop thinking about the day you leave this place.
You will drive yourself nuts thinking about that year and four months
down the road. Your life is here now, isn’t it."
"Yes," he agreed.
"You can’t think about your life outside of here. Look around, what can
you do with your life right here? You have a year and four months to do
SOMETHING. What is it going to be? Sit on your ass and whine, or make
something of this time?"
"I dunno," he said as if it was the first time he had heard that before.
"Why do you think, Manuel, that this guy dissed you? Do you think he
was frightened or threatened by you? Do you think he had something to
prove to someone else? In either case, he needs something he doesn’t
have. He’s more lost than you are. He’s smaller than you are.
"Maybe…"
"Next time look at him as a tiny little lost child throwing a tantrum.
Try to help him, not maybe in the heat of the moment, but walk away and
then come back later and offer a hand of friendship. Make a project for
yourself. Manuel, there is much to do here. Take some of it upon
yourself."
"I’ll try," he answered skeptically. I didn’t hope for much, but maybe just a tiny bit sunk in.
In subsequent weeks we practiced tranquility, quiet words, peace, calm
in the face of the torment. I related to him my failings with my
temper, and how I should try to reflect more empathy before I lash out
with my words… try to put myself in the shoes of the other. "I fail
frequently," I told him.
"Claro, we can’t be perfect. Everybody fails from time to time," he answered.
"Yes, that’s for sure."
I want to write about an interesting revelation I had about a friend
of mine from the Army. I thought about writing a little character
sketch from a first person point of view, as if I was him. I tossed
that idea, because this interesting revelation I had could NEVER be one
that you make about yourself. Hmmm, maybe I could do it third person. I
wrote out a couple of sentences from a third person perspective and it
didn’t sound right either. From the third person it sounded too cold,
calculating, and smug. This revelation I had was warmer more personal.
Even though I realized that I had stumbled upon one of the BIG ONES, a
flaw so deeply embedded in our psyche that it escapes us and our
viewpoints, wherever they may exist, I could not find a way to write
it. I looked for a perspective, but none could be found. I wanted so
bad to SHOW this flaw, expose it by proxy, let the feeling of the thing
be known, not told. But I couldn’t find the words. I suspect it must be
told.
He works so hard to keep things from seeping in, he forgets from time to time, things seep out.
Something about his behavior always rubbed me the wrong way. I noticed
that this person, a ridged believer in temperance and piety, would make
comments, inappropriate for one who holds the Truth. Sometimes they
were bigoted or sexist. The key though was that he didn’t see them,
didn’t recognize them as enemies. His enemy was alcohol, tobacco, or
dance. Keep those marauders at bay and his homestead would be safe.
Meanwhile there is this leak that oozes out leaving a stench to which,
I imagine, he has become accustomed.
I note sometimes how he looks down his nose at me. The last time it was
for drinking and smoking a cigar (tobacco is a big no-no). He likes me,
but I sense the distain from time to time, the superiority that comes
from a hurler of stones rather than a builder of homes. A hurler of
stones marches out with his "creed for life" in the guise of
conversion, but really ends up being a quest for validation. My way is
the right way… isn’t it? And some fear seeps out, little bits of that
nasty bile, choking him, sending him into convulsions. In his writhing, he casts you out. Get thee from my home cursed Satan!
A builder of homes, though, invites you in to sit
a spell. Come as you are he says, and doesn’t mind that you throw your
feet up on his coffee table. Afterall he built it to stand the test of
time, and he’s not worried. He built it once, he could build it again.
It’s an ugly sight, let me tell you. I’m just glad that I don’t have
any of that shit leaking out of me. You’d let me know wouldn’t you?
Thanks.
8 lbs, 3 oz, 19.5 inches in length. He came out perfectly and mother and baby are doing fine. Now get to those pictures. I’m heading back to the hospital.
Olaia, has this hilarious thing she has been doing lately. She
thinks she has super powers (too much Powerpuff Girls, I guess). When
she get’s tired she tells us that her powers are gone. Hehe. "Mommy,
Daddy, my powers are all gone."
"Oh, really, little girl."
"I’m not a little girl, I’m a big girl!"
"Okay, maybe if you go to sleep your powers will come back."
So off she goes to bed. When she wakes up in the morning, she comes
out and blinks rapidly at me. "Daddy, my powers are back." I fall down
as she zaps me with her eye beams.
"Oh no, you got me with your eye beams."
"They are not eye beams, Daddy. They’re lasers."
"Oh. Well, you got me with your lasers!" She smiles and laughs and chases me around the house. I tell you, it’s a riot.
Haven’t written much lately… been concentrating on esoterica for
some reason. Lots of thoughts and emotions have been swirling in my
mind. It’s almost like the things I have been trying to come to terms
with all of my adult life are narrowing down, coalescing, reaching a
perfect limit. I am more sure of many things than I have ever been
before. I am cooking on one helluva long deep introspective soul
bearing post for the near future… but for now let me leave this here
as a reminder to myself that I need to get off my ass and write it.
My most common, and I believe most people’s most common mistake in
life is asking the wrong questions. A lot of conscious and good human
beings ask the question, "Why am I here? Why does the universe exist?"
Wrong questions both. I believe. No! I know! (The Matrix yields good
philosophy, eh?) These are the wrong questions to ask. THE question
should be, "What… What am I to do with my life?" Why am I here morphs
into an acceptance that I am indeed here… something that I KNOW…
that everyone knows. There is no belief, no faith, no reason to doubt.
It is as clear and beautiful and easy as anything that I or anyone has
ever known.
John Lennon’s "Imagine," used to irk me. It sounded blasphemous to
my young Catholic ears. But now that I am older, its wisdom is not in
the wish for no religion, no hell, no heaven, but a clear message of
"stop arguing and fighting over those things… those toys. You know
what, if you can’t behave, it’s better that the toys never existed.
These toys make you fight, and be selfish and fearful. What value are
they then?" – This works surprising well on children too.
The question left after you have made this obvious observation and
stopped riddling yourself with rounds of automatic doubt and fear, is
this: What are you going to do with this life you have?
This folds neatly into so many different philosophies, truths, and
ways and it’s so simple. Why the hell didn’t I see if before? Well, as
I later point out (Dragons and Rats),
we have this tendency to view saviors as slayers of dragons (Jesus,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Ghandi) rather than teachers
of rat killing. Which is why we decide to kill them when they fail in
their perceived mission. They all preached smallness, adherence to
simplicity. Be humble, empathetic, loving, do not do violence to one
another, respect, and challenge each other. Do not have fear. Instead we
fixate on our fear and believe that this person is going to slay it. He
will conquer the cause of our fear. He will dispell the Romans. He will
beat back the white people. He will deliver us from the British. He
will deliver us from Apartheid. He will grant us eternal life.
No, no, no, you fools! Actually, I could see Jesus today with a
group of college kids, "Dude, dude, that’s not what I’m after." Jesus wipes some wax onto his surfboard. "You’re
not gettin’ it. I’m not here to save your ass. I’m here to tell you
that I’ve been down with you since the beginning. Listen, I’ve got this
study guide here that’s gonna help you out tons."
We instead try to find the mystical. We look for signs of heaven.
Everlasting life. We look for bleeding wounds, pieces of cloth shaped
like I don’t know what. There was this case in Mexico I believe… or
was it Guatemala, where the concrete in the airport was sweating, and
the water stain was shaped like an image of the Virgin Mary. People had
put out flowers, lit candles, and were huddled around it praying for
their souls. Wow… we need so much, don’t we.
If we are scientists, academics, or just cynical, we say it (heaven,
hell, god) doesn’t exist. We argue that it doesn’t make sense. That
Christians are freaks and deluded, all the while we delude ourselves
with thoughts of "why" instead of "what."
If I could just knock their heads together, Christians and
Aethiests. Stop trying to prove or disprove the unprovable, the
unknowable. We could just wink out at the end of our lives, or carry on
in some celestial form. I don’t know. I don’t even believe.
Belief is for weenees.
Basically belief is just a holding pattern, a wait, for something
that can’t be known. Don’t believe you can, KNOW you can. I know this
is the message of all the great men and women of history – the
prophets, the Messiah, the leaders of civil rights, great people who
all had one thing in common. They all knew what they had to do. They
didn’t ask why (except maybe in darker hours, or during moments of
despair). They knew that there is no greater waste than to live life
waiting for the next. There is no more selfish act than to seek your
own salvation. And there is no greater travesty than to fear the great
frontier that exists at the edge of life.
It will take care of itself.
In the meantime, the "what do we do?" is crystal clear. We look to
others, help them with their pain, fear and doubt. We will clean their
wounds, comfort them in their sorrow, and struggle for peace. We cannot
do much as individuals – maybe all we can manage is to take up the small
battles and kick some rat ass.
I don’t mean for every entry I write to become some kind of
philosophical journey or meandering… but I just can’t help it. This
melancholic soul of mine just can’t seem to sit still. Maybe it’s all
the hard times we’ve been through in these past few years or all the
joy we have because of our daughter. I don’t know what it is, but I
just can’t seem to shake this smile I have.
I have something else, that I want to write here, but I haven’t had
the motivation. Something happened to me about a year and half ago that
started me down this path that I believe is the right one. Although as
I mentioned I don’t have the energy to get it down. I’ve been trying,
believe me, but it’s just not there yet. However, for the sake of my
sanity, I have to get something down, some results, fruits so to
speak… better to show than tell anyway.
Tonight was a late night at work. We didn’t leave until around nine.
Roberto, Laura’s brother and Miray, his wife, were nice enough to look
after Olaia while we toiled away. Since we were in meetings until late,
we hadn’t had a chance to eat. Once again, Roberto and Miray came to
our aid with a tasty Lebanese dish, a kind of middle eastern meatloaf
with pita bread and accompaniments. A meal like that after a hard day
at work can’t help but leave you punchy and happy.
I don’t know how exactly we got started on it… wait, oh yes I do.
Miray was talking about ruts. She says, a bit self-consciously, her
life might look like it’s in a rut. It’s not, she assures us, but well,
you know, it might be. She takes care of her children, she cooks, she
cleans, she picks them up from school. She thinks for a bit. Well
there’s not much else, she concludes, but it feels full. She says it’s
not like she feels empty, but sometimes when thinking about all the
plans from college, what you imagined your life to be like, what
potential, the dreams you never fulfilled. It’s the things for which
you have no taste anymore. This doesn’t taste the same. Was it I who
changed?
I’ve been thinking much of the same things these past few years –
not that my life has been boring, but I’ve been beating myself up for
not accomplishing more, for not having what I wanted to have at the age
of 32.
And you know what it’s all pretty simple, we concluded and somewhat
heartening, which is really all that is important when you’re trying to
cheer each other up and feel good.
What do you use to study the world around you? Maybe you use a
telescope for looking at the infinite outside of our solar system,
distant stars, great novas, vast expanses that dwarf the imagination.
It’s so large so great, you feel filled up staring at it, as if you
would never get bored staring at the same stretch of sky, that you
would never never get old before your time? You lose yourself way up
there, imagining you are hanging upside down over this calm sea of
infinity. You begin to forget the grass upon which you lie, the blades
that formerly scratched your back, made your legs itch. It all seems
less important. The crickets fad into a distant blanket of white noise
lost beneath the threshold of your consciousness. There’s that big
thing… and it’s all that matters.
Perhaps, though, there is something else that captures your fancy
more. Maybe, just maybe you’re fascinated by the microscopic. You want
to peer into these little spaces that no one knows about. It’s not
enough to know the grandness of things… it’s the smallness that
captures your imagination, the mundane, the infinitesimal. You know
your world. It’s the small things that give you pleasure, the squeeze
of a tiny hug, kissing a boo-boo to make it feel better. Do you come
home to a little dog to whom you are the entire world and who cannot
contain herself as she leaps and jumps knocking over everything in her
path. Do you feel those things? It’s easy to miss the little things
while you are staring off into space.
So it was that we concluded that there was the infinity outside of
ourselves and the infinity within; one, an infinity of greatness and
journey and abundance. One spirit sees and does what all large and
great spirits beg to do… to stomp, to dream, to make loud noises, ignite
fires, and light up the world. The other seeks to pacify and understand
and foment. It loves the broken, embattled and the weak. Its empathy
and compassion and patience temper the fire, baffle the noise, and
dampen the vibrations that ripple all around us.
A young pupil in a quandary for direction, asked his teacher how he
may judge the battles upon which to draw his sword. "How, sensei,
should I pick my battles so that I may be victorious?"
The teacher paused, and with a firm wisdom, replied. "Young student,
this is not an easy question to answer, but I will give you the best
advice I can give you." He lowered his voice to a whisper.
"Beware the great beast, for he may slay you with a single
swipe of his claws or with but a blast of his fiery breath. Step
lightly and do not choose this battle with a thought of impunity."
The master lifted his eyes and raised his voice emphatically.
"Be mindful always of the rats that scurry about the beast’s legs, for they will surely devour you in time. Step boldly, and always take this battle wherever it can be found."
If you can do these things, you will be victorious and a champion in your own right.
Billy Buckthorn was thrown violently down, straining as he fell to
retrieve pieces of himself fluttering to the ground in the low gravity
atmosphere. These were the things that kept him from becoming detached.
From what he couldn’t say. But he had been losing himself out here for
a while now. He stared at a photo of early Elvis that lay scattered
amongst his things. There it was, the coolest man who ever lived. Life
was getting hot, really hot, and he could have used some of that
coolness now.
They are evil. They are monsters. They are the devil incarnate. How
could this happen. We scream that we will destroy you. We flail, we
gnash our teeth, we writhe in anger, angst, bewilderment, pain and
grief. We can’t work, we can’t play, we can’t find meaning in life
again. It’s just so senseless, so meaningless. How could someone do
such a thing. They must not be human. They can’t be from the human
race. We must wipe them out, we must stop them from doing this again.
Let’s call on all our might, military might, wash them from existence,
our existence. They are not fit to live. Why oh why are they doing
this?!!
We fall back heaving, uncomfortable with our own skin, clawing at
ourselves looking for answers, possibly even the right questions to
define what has happened. We roll from side to side as if in a feverish
nightmare from which we cannot awaken. Everything we took for granted
means nothing. We aren’t buying anymore, we aren’t going out. We have
no grasp on the reality that someone destroyed in a matter of minutes
the lives of 6000 Americans and their families in a tragic and horrific
manner. How could…?! why?!!
We have NO concept of what has happened to us.
But more quietly… it’s happened before, recently and going back
some time. We’ve dealt with this before. We’ve seen it, touched it,
pulled it apart with the apathetic spirit of a child pulling the legs
off an insect. We think we understand it, but we are just going through
the motions, and when we close the book we are satisfied that we GET
it. We executed the proper judgment, analysis, and action required and
moved on. News media wraps up the event faster than anyone, before the
blood is dry, we’re back to Hollywood scandals, infidelity in Congress,
the Pennant race… World events that are so far away… so very very
very far away. We listfully drift into a pleasant slumber, a collective
shrug of our shoulders as we press our hands together and rest our head
upon them. So profound is our lack of understanding that the only
course of action is the return to folly and sleep.
We know of no desperation in America.
We’ve seen its results… Columbine, Oklahoma, various other mass
murders or acts of senseless violence designed to take the maximum
amount of lives in what amounts to a suicide. It is an act of such
desperation that neither the quantity nor the quality of lives
destroyed matters at all. I don’t care, I don’t care, I DON’T CARE!!!
My life is meaningless, I have nothing to which to look forward, my
life, this thing called existence is pain, emptiness, misery, anger,
fear…
Fear. There’s the thing. Let me get in there. Can you shine that
light over here? I need to get a grasp on it. Let me wiggle it a bit.
Hmm, need to brace…, nughgh, won’t budge… Are you sure that’s it?
Let me get the manual.
Americans live a life of plenty, generally. We are affluent,
powerful, motivated, caring, loving, kind-hearted, full of life and we
know no desperation. We have so little despair in this great nation of
ours, we don’t have tools with which to combat it either here when it
rears up nor abroad where it is more plentiful. We punish it. We
execute it. We launch cruise missiles at it. We sanction it. These
futile actions only serve to demonstrate how ill-equipped we are to
combat despair.
We call them evil. We call them war like, hateful… dogs. Kill them
all, let God sort them out. Recycle their karma. We call those among
us, evil, deviants, mentally unbalanced. We lock them up or execute
them. We hide or bury them. Was I the only one in the country that
wanted Timothy McVeigh around for another 50 years… I wanted to see
what kind of adult he’d turn into. Would he leave his despair behind
eventually or not? Would he find a reason to live? Would he repent
someday? I at least wanted to get to know him better, learn how a human
could have so little empathy, so little hope, so little understanding.
I want to understand.
But we trudge on, we good hearted, well-meaning Americans, oblivious
to the one true cause. It’s that thing that binds us as humans…
perhaps the only true commonality among us. Why are we here? We fear
what comes after, tomorrow. We fear rejection, failure, pain, others,
and life. We fear life because we don’t understand it. It’s the fear of
life that leads to despair and eventually great suffering.
We Americans need to take a deep breath, think of all the horrific
characters of history, those terrorists, murders, and criminals as
infants newborn in their mother’s arms with so much potential for
greatness and life, and we should cry for them. We should never look
for excuses to explain how their lives turned out. But we should make
great effort to look for the reasons why they became so fearful and
lost themselves.
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