Breathless

There are moments in life, moments we have all experienced to one degree or another, that take our breath away. How and when these instances occur are rarely foreseeable, almost never predictable, and always awe inspiring. Which makes the fact that they happen at all even more significant, more worthy of our consideration.

Maybe this breath-taking moment occurs when we are in the presence of that beachfront sunrise. Maybe it's in the mutual and unexpected glance from across the room, or the long anticipated contact of skin on skin. Maybe it's the cry of your firstborn nephew, as he leaves the womb and makes his entrance into the world and your life. Maybe it's the way the river flows or the waves crash. Maybe it's the way you witness how one person cares for another, or the way in which a memory can't quite be shaken.

Maybe it's the way someone walks into a room.

Or leaves a room.

Maybe it's a song, or the way a person stops, turns to you, and says, "this is amazing", and you can't help but agree. Maybe it's the conversation, or the space between two people. Maybe it's the way someone says you are welcome. You are wanted.

Maybe the breathtaking moment is in the realization that everything you've ever known or believed to be true could be questioned. Or maybe it's in the way your daughter can take initiative, or your son can be so giving. Or maybe it's in the way you suddenly realize that your parents are fallible. Maybe it's a moment of decidely undeserved grace.

Maybe it's a million different things, at a million different moments. You never can predict...

The rub is that in all of these moments there exists another possibility: that you can be suffocated, unable to catch back the rhythm of your breathing. You can choke and gasp for air. The rub is that in being so moved, that in being rendered so short of breath, you may be unable to ever be the same corpeal personage you were the minute before.

Because in every second that we stop breathing, in every instance that our breath is taken away, we in some way stop being who we were just a second ago.

We instead begin to change,. We are altered. we begin to become.

It is not easy, being suffocated by our breathless moments.

It's not easy to change, to become.

Whether we like it, want it, need it, or are ready for it, the fact and the hope is that every one of these instances brings us closer to who we really are, who we can and perhaps should be-our authentic selves. Every one of these moments allows us to move towards a truth. A truth we sometimes don't want to acknowledge. Can't acknowledge. Won't acknowledge.

But it is a truth nonetheless, this we know.

And that truth...well, it can take our breath away.

And give it back to us.

It's not easy being green

A friend and I were talking today, and she announced that she is sick of the "green movement". This proclamation quickly redirected me from an obsession with finding some good fettucine alfredo to a concern for her state of mind. This particular friend happens to be pretty darn earth/health/everything conscious. I thought maybe something real bad was happening, and the next thing she'd tell me was that she was embarking on a diet of beer and apple seeds, just to see what would happen. I had to intervene.

The best response I could muster in this instance, though, was a wide-eyed "WHY?!"

I tend to cave in sensitive situations.

She explained, and I was relieved to learn that she was not abandoning her long held ways. Instead she was lamenting that others have seemed to join the "green movement" as they would any popular new trend that has a corresponding television show. Her whole life she was taught to do the things people were now just discovering, and it was frustrating to her.

Once I determined she was not in fact abandoning her ways, and that she was going to be ok, I resumed my quest for fettucine alfredo, and having concluded my quest I set to thinking about what she had said. And eventually, I too became annoyed, but probably for different reasons. Or, maybe not.

Like any new cultural phenomenon, the green movement has profited from an unbelievable marketing campaign. In a sense, this is a really good thing. People at least have some consciousness about the ways in which their behaviors can impact the environment, for good or evil. There is an incredible amount of peer pressure being applied all over country to buy Prius's, use renewable shopping bags, and cut out processed foods. Everyone, it seems, is doing it. Like wearing Jordache jeans, eating at Friday's, or driving a BMW, there is a certain status associated with being as green as possible. Or, as green as you can comfortably be...

Generally I take issue with fads and trends, because like Brett Farve's retirement, they tend to start enthusiastically and end very quickly. I also take issue with them because they are only as popular as they are comfortable. When a movement starts to exact a toll on a person's comfort level, nine times out of ten that person will move on.

Being green isn't easy. Like most good and right things, it requires setting aside many of our luxuries, our "entitlements", and learning to live without, to live responsibly. And being responsible means that we have to spend an awful lot of time thinking about something other than our own comfort, our own wants, needs, and desires. We have to not care about what people think about the things we don't do and don't have. We have to let go of a whole way of thinking and living that tells us more is better. And we have to do this in a deeply real and authentic way.

For me, lots of people are claiming a concern for the environment as if it were a new thing, something they can pioneer until the next thing comes along. (Kind of like when everyone thought Bono discovered Africa, and everyone became an expert on the plight of her inhabitants.) I suspect that for many, spending an afternoon at Whole Foods using recycled bags that are then shoved into the back of a prius is a feel good moment. Remembering to take the Nalgene bottle and filling it up at the closest water fountain...another feel good moment. Composting? The darkest hue of the contemporary bourgeois' green-ness, and utter nirvana. Be sure to tell people about it...

For people who have lived their whole lives bucking the culture of want and trying to live the life of should, I would imagine this almost adolescent glee over the green movement would be frustrating. It is your way of life, turned trendy. It's your deepest beliefs and understandings about how we should be in the world slickified.

It's stopping the car to take a picture of the Amish family in their buggy.

There's something terribly depressing about that, because as has been mentioned, trends come and go. What was once the object of the trend becomes passe and dated. Laughable. Ignorable. Once the audience has tired and is clamoring to move on, demanding something else to spend their money on, looking for something else to satiate their need to be in and cool and hip, the marketing machine will work its magic and who knows, maybe in a few years paper mache will be all the rage.

For those who were green before green was cool, and for those who are truly transformed by their participation in such a movement, this is yet another storm to weather. The best that can be done is to keep on doing what you have been doing, help others to do the same, and hope that this particular social epoch ranks as the longest lasting trend in the history of the world.

The Morbid Curiousity of Prostitutes, redux

In a recent email, I was asked to share more catholic school stories, so here is a re-post from another site:

I grew up on a farm that's been in our family since the mid 1800's. My great-great grandfather arrived here from Germany, bought a hundred acres in 1847,built a few houses, and the family has been there ever since. Growing up, my brother and I had free reign of pastures, streams, ponds, and forest. We had more than a lot of people could ever dream of.

For the first several years, before my formal schooling began, I took it all for granted. It just was. But then I was enrolled in catholic school. It was there that I learned that God had made everything. The trees, the deer, the fields, the lakes, the sky. Everything.

I was very, very impressed by God.

One day, after school, I remember running through the fields, rolling down a hill, jumping up, and breathelessly yelling "I love God!". I was seven, and many would interpret this as my first religious experience. However, during a recent existential crisis, while questioning everything I knew and believed to be true, i told my mom this story. She recalled that was the day I had led my toddler brother into the hayfield and left him there, stranded, in yet another one of my many attempts to regain full control of the household. So, she didn't see it so much as a religious experience as it was a victory dance.

They did eventually find him... just for the record...

In addition to learning that God made everything, you learn other very important things in catholic school, especially as you approach the time in which you will be making some of your first holy sacraments. I took this incredibly seriously, because I loved God and everything he had made very very much. So, when anticipating my weekly visit to the confessional after receiving sacrament #2 (confession), I made sure that each week I would have something to talk about. If it made God happy to forgive people, I wanted him to be giddy with joy over forgiving me.

Next came the sacrament of first holy communion. While all christian denominations consider this sacred, Catholics take it to a whole other level. They believe that the bread and wine actually become jesus' body and blood. Now, when you are learning about this as a third grader, the first thing you learn is that the sacristy is sacred, and only the priest can go into it, because that is where jesus' body and blood is.

Whoa! The one thing you should NOT tell a defiant, god loving, farm raised 9 year old is don't go in that, jesus is in there.

I HAD to get in there.

For about a week I considered my options, and after carefully obeserving the playground monitors each day at recess, I settled on the "distract and run" tactic. With proper speed, I could detach myself from the group fight i started, run across the playground, and get into the church.

It was flawless in plan and execution. Trembling with awe and anticipation, I approached the darkened altar, (which was immense when you are four feet tall.) It was so quiet, and so holy feeling. Mary staring at me from one corner, St. John from the other. They were encouraging me, I could tell by the look in their painted eyes. The lingering incense made me dizzy, and there was an extra special lightheaded feeling because in mere seconds, I was going to see Jesus!
I approached the never-to -be -opened -by -a -non -priest sacristy, slowly pulled back the curtain, closed my eyes, and opened the door...

...i could hardly wait!...

Eyes OPEN!

WTF!!!!

EMPTY. Completely freaking empty!

At this moment, as I stood speechless, trembling now not with awe but with full fledged 9 year old rage, Sister Rosalia and Sister Alice Marie entered the church. As they pulled me from the alter, I informed them that Father Bartley was a liar, and that I was in no uncertain terms pissed about the divine betrayal I had just experienced. OK, I did not actually use the words "divine betrayal" but the words father, liar, and pissed were used.

I was taken to the principals office, where now several nuns gathered around me, looking very, very stern. The lecture began. The nuns were just flabbergasted at my disobedience.There was talk of hell. There was an emphasis on the direct relationship between hell and morbid curiosity, which apparently I had demonstrated.

Sister Alice Marie asked, "How could a child of such good catholic parents do somethign so vile?"

"MY MOM IS NOT CATHOLIC" I screamed, because i was really pissed now,

"SHE IS PROSTITUTE!!!"

Dead silence. Stone cold silence.

Of course, they knew she was not a prostitute. She was something worse.

She was Protestant.

She was one of the ones that had undermined the authority of the catholic church with their morbid curiousities. Like science, and astronomy, and physics. She and others like her did not believe in the same sacred laws and rituals, yet claimed to believe in god. But they did not believe in the real true god, theirs was a false god. they were misguided and doomed to hellfire. Plus, she was in a lot of trouble for posing as a catholic to get me into the school...

Oh, how the joys of religious abandon can be so quickly dashed. Mere moments earlier I was blissfully ignorant of hell, protestants, false gods, prostitutes, and science. There was one thing and one thing only: god who made everything and who eventually led my parents to find my brother when i left him in the field.

I can say with some certainty that i have never recovered from that day, from that disappointment. But every now and again, at the oddest yet most appropriate time, I'll get that feeling of awe, and I'll catch a whiff of frankincense that comes from out of nowhere, and I'll think to myself, "maybe I was looking in the wrong sacristy..."

You're never sure if the illusion is real...

The holiday weekend passed with it's usual series of non-events, save an unintentionally long and Blair Witch like foray into the wilderness, despite having in our possession a fairly sophisticated gps device. But that is another story for another time. Today I will focus on the will to live, and why living things appear to have it.

Thursday evening, july 3rd. was the annual "jolly july 3rd" celebration hosted by the Oil City Arts Council, of which I am a board member. That being the case, it was my responsibility to be present at said festivities should there be any need for my assistance. Given the deluge, the afternoon events and the first concert were pretty much a washout. Thus un-needed, I went home, changed into dry clothes and headed back for the second concert and the fireworks. I sat on a small hillside that abuts the park and spent the dwindling daylight hours watching the hundreds of people mill about the park as they too, waited for the fireworks display.

At times like these, when I lack sleep and am in the midst of hundreds of people, I tend to obsessively "people watch " rather than, say, nap like I should. My mind wanders all over as I wonder about the various individuals I've got a bead on, and invariably before they pass from my sightline I have created a whole series of life events for them. How joyous or how harrowing these life events are usually depends on the hasty judgment I have made about their overall character and personal disposition.

It is not easy being me.

This particular evening, though, I couldn't quite fixate on one individual or group long enough to make up their story. Instead, I was kind of taking in everyone all at once, and couldn't shake the question that kept running through my head: "why do they get up in the morning?"

Now, I was not asking this question because I felt there were reasons why this or that person shouldn't get up in the morning, I was asking because I think the human will to live is fascinating, and sometimes when you see all these different types of people in one place, and you know each of them has a story so spectacular you couldn't even come close to making up a better one, you just have to wonder, why do all these people choose to get up in the morning? What drives them to face each day and prepare for the next? What is their reason?

Viktor Frankl, a noted psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor has written several works that address, from an existential perspective, the "meanings of life" people create in order to choose life over death. One of his most intriguing works, Man's Search for Meaning, was written shortly after his liberation, and recounts the various experiences of his and his fellow prisoners in the Terezin Concentration camp. It's important to note that he considers living a choice that one makes when one has sufficiently created a "why" for which to live. He found that in the camps, for some the "why" was revenge, for others it was love, and for still others it was hope. But inevitably the "why" that created the illusion of meaning would be deconstructed by the reality of the circumstances. In the end he found that it was only the belief in something beyond themselves that led people to consistently choose to get up each morning despite the overwhelming odds against any form of happiness.

We, each of us, cannot fathom a life marked by the horrors of time spent in the Nazi camps. Or any such camp before or since. So, it is difficult to try and make any comparison when considering what it is that compels you to get up each morning. But, if every conceivable answer (i have to make breakfast for the kids, I have to go to work, I have to watch "Ellen", I like mornings, I have to check my ebay auction, I just have to...) were to become invalid, to just be stripped away, why would you get up in the morning? Would you get up in the morning? What reason for living could you not part with?

I couldn't help but think that I don't really think about it that much, why each day I choose to get up and go through my various routines. Day after day, getting up and going through the motions of living, for reasons that could so very easily and quickly be stripped away. What is underneath all of that, though? What would be my breaking point, if any? What would be the reason I would say "no more..." Admittedly, it's not very fun to think about, but the reality is that there is quite possibly an unwavering reason each of us has, even if we can't access it through our immediate faculties of intellect and reason.

I think there is within each of us some connection to something other, something beyond, something that keeps us glancing in the direction of divinity and compelling us, usually, to choose to keep going forward., keep getting up in the morning. (Some don't make that choice, a reality of which I am all too painfully familiar, but most of us do, and that is what I am talking about here.) It is this connection, recognized or not, that ties us not only to something outside of ourselves, but also to each other.

At the end of the day, regardless of our differences, most of us are going to choose to get up the next day and face life to the best of our ability.

In that way we are connected-in our belief that the illusion is real, and therefore we will go forward.

Fascinating.

I'm Sorry, I regret that my words may have caused pain

We are experiencing an historic period in American politics, and it is fascinating indeed. The past eight years have been just short of a nightmare, and have done little to counter my tinged-with-fatalism approach to political involvement of any sort. But strangely, I have become so very intrigued with, and excited about, the upcoming elections - not only the hope that the democratic party brings, but the fact that a black man and a woman have established themselves so convincingly as the probable leaders of the free world. For the record, I am completely supportive of an Obama/Clinton ticket, because of the great political theatre staged in Unity, NH last week. I mean, really, "Beautiful Day"? That's so freaking hip!

But this is not about politics. This little rant is about the number of public apologies and forced resignations that occurred throughout the primaries when someone would make some comment about someone else's something. All the candidates and their associates at some point had to apologize for saying something that may have been offensive to someone else. It was the most disappointing aspect of all that has occurred thus far.

In my opinion, these folks were saying what they thought, what they observed, and what they had come to believe through experience. Political discourse occurs on multiple levels, and we usually like it when the speeches are lofty and broad, full of hope, and the rhetoric just vague enough to let us think we know what the candidate is talking about. But the minute the talk heads toward and issue of race, or gender, or orientation, or socio-economic status, suddenly nothing can be said that doesn't offend someone, and then the litany of public apologies begins, usually culminating in someone having to step down.

Personally, I didn't think that much of what was said and then later apologized for was too off base. But as a society, we are becoming less tolerant in the need to think through things, to consider the broader context and understand how a sentiment or belief can be born out of that. If you think about it, was Barack Obama that off base when he charaterized rural America as bitter about the economic and social conditions that have eroded a way of life? Was Geraldine Ferraro that off base when she questioned whether or not, in today's society, a black man could be elected president?

Rather than looking at ourselves as a society and individual communities, and wondering WHY these types of comments have made it to the "belief" category of some people's world view, the response was "Hey, that's ignorant! We don't like that! It's wrong! Apologize!!!"

Of course, much of this was political posturing on the part of the opponent, to be sure. However, that opponent could make that move because there is a base out there that would respond and say "Yeah, just because farmlands have been corporatized and industries shipped overseas, leaving hundreds of thousands of people at the brink of losing the intergenerational family homestead, with only memories of what it meant to work and provide, that doesn't mean people in rural america are bitter!" or.. "Yeah, just because blacks have been oppressed for hundreds of years by various forms of slavery, and today still experiences subtle and overt racial discrimination, disproportionate educational career and educational opportunities, and is more likely to be stuck in a socially constructed cycle of urban poverty, that doesn't mean he can't be president..." Come on...


So the candidate apologizes, or the staffer resigns, and we go one with the business of feeling all good after fluffy speeches. That's what we like, as a whole, to feel good, to feel as if everything is ok and if it isn't someone should apologize for pointing it out.

A dangerous society is one that demands uniformity of thought., and constantly having to apologize for what you say is one way to establish uniformity of thought-it sets a precedent for standards: this is ok to say, this isn't, say this, not that.

I'd rather know what these people actually think, and make my decisions based on their public statements, rather than get all offended and make them say something less offensive, even though they may still BELIEVE what they said in the first place. And each time one person apologizes, someone else learns what to spin, further obscuring what may be the real truth.

We need to be a little better about not getting all in a snit when someone says something we don't like-we need to challenge it, discuss it, debate it, enter into a dialogue. We need to have facts and good arguments, we need to consider all sides, not just the ones we are comfortable with, we need to do the hard work of admitting that we don't have a lock on the truth, and the only way to get closer to it is by engaging and challenging ourselves with one another.

It isn't easy, sometimes, to hear the stupid shit that people say about other people, and it is even more difficult to hear the true but less than flattering stuff. But we need to be better about avoiding the discourse so we don't have to feel bad, or worse, apologize.

Confessing

For the first nine years of my formal schooling, I attended a private Catholic school. Since said school was financially strapped, my brother and I had to ride the public school bus to the private school. Being an overweight, rather ugly child outfitted everyday in a brown plaid jumper with suede hush puppies, I wasn't winning any popularity contests, and was definitely not ever invited to sit in the back with the "cool" kids. In fact, finding anyone who would let me sit with them often proved challenging. More than once I stood by the bus driver for the 4 mile ride to school, frequently being pelted with spitballs and learning interesting new names for fat kids in plaid jumpers.

It is no understatement that I HATED that bus ride, those kids, and the too-poor-for-its-own-buses Catholic school. And hate has an interesting way of manifesting itself.

These kids had a "clubhouse" in the quarry behind my house. It was an abandoned mining shack, duly outfitted with posters, old furniture, and other asundry items of interest to pre-teen monsters. I didn't know this stuff was in there because I had been invited to the place, I knew it because I saw it the day I went there armed with a full gas can and a pack of matches, my little brother in tow.

As I said, hate has an interesting way of manifesting itself. In this particular instance it resulted in a three alarm fire.

Despite the fact that I emerged from the general vicinity of the blaze covered in soot and reeking of gasoline, I immediately and vehemently denied to my parents and the authorities any involvement. At ten years old, you firmly believe that your lies will be taken as gospel. Well, maybe you believe that no matter how old you are. What's the point of lying otherwise? no matter, the truth was as bright and clear as the shiny red fire trucks. To everyone but me, that is.

Continuing my denial for days on end, my father decided that if I wouldn't tell them the truth, perhaps going to confession would save what appeared to be my doomed soul. (it should also be noted that between the blaze and the confessional, I had the shit beat out of me by the clubhouse owners)...So off to the big wooden box I went.

But, I lied in there, too. Just failed to mention that I had committed arson, lied about it, and was was going to lie again when I told my father I had confessed everything. I did, however, admit to hitting my brother and swearing. Mostly because I liked saying "shit" in church, even if it was only in the confessional box.

That was the last time I went to confession, and since then I have developed an increasingly strict philosophy of non-or only partial disclosure. But lately I have started to feel that the whole idea of confessing, and receiving forgiveness from someone else (rather than becoming comfortable with your own rationalizations) is a pretty important part of being human.

The past six months have been challenging on several levels. I have not been at my best and brightest personally, having failed relationships, seemingly insurmountable debt, an unfinished dissertation, good friends who have moved away, dead dogs, dead aunts, a profound fear of everything, and the extremely uncomfortable realization that almost every negative thing in my life has resulted from my refusal to make good, mature decisions.

So I just want to scream "I am a COMPLETE FUCK UP!!!!!!" and have it be heard. I want to confess. Not to hear "It will be alright", or "I'll fix it for you" or "things happen for a reason" I don't want to hear those things. I want to confess. I want to acknowledge not only my brokeness, but also my responsibility in the matter. I want to review every humiliating detail of my darker thoughts and my deeds, and just get rid of it.

OK, maybe not every detail, but you get the idea.

But to whom does one confess these things? This is the question that I have been pondering for quite some time. I am not talking about a counselor type person. They get paid to have you be screwed up. And I am not talking about priests or clergy or anything like that. I just wonder, who do people see as their confessors? Friends? Partners? Bartenders? Dogs?

Sometimes I look at people, and I wonder when was the last time they were levelled by the feeling of being completely responsible for their lives, desperately needing to tell the truth they know about themselves to someone other than the face in the mirror. To whom do they turn, and what does it reveal, that I have to ask that question at all?

Confess. Confession.

Interesting.

It's not even that i have any deep, dark secrets of such an awful nature that I can't bear the thought. It's just that over the course of the past several years I have failed to acknowledge my fallibility, I have hurt people and blamed them for it, I have acted irresponsibly, I have knowingly made poor decisions for which I am now reaping the consequences.

Confess. Confession. Interesting...

If you have ever seen Frank Warren's "PostSecrets", where people write a long held secret on a postcard and send it in to what eventually gets published as a book that millions purchase, you know that I am not alone in in experiencing a need to confess. I find it fascinating that PostSecrets exists, and is so immensely popular. We are all broken, fallible, but for some reason it isn't acceptable to be that way. So secrets get written on postcards and sent and are read by millions, and I wonder if the writers of the postcards ever feel any better, ever experience grace.

Maybe I'll try it...

An introduction, of sorts

For the past few months I have been toying with the idea of venturing in some new directions with my blogging. It seems that my fluffy MySpace blogs fail to adequately capture what I have come to realize as my "darker side". Therefore in order to be a more authentic blogger and, perhaps, to publicly exercise (yes, "exercise", not "exorcise" just yet) my personal demons, I have decided to start this blog spot blog.

The decision was made today, while spending my last three dollars of the foreseeable future on bread and coffee filters. Rankled lately with seemingly overwhelming life obstacles, I was not particularly "chipper" during this transaction. But the check-out lady was. She handed me my fours cents in change, bagged my items, and handed me the bundle with an enthusiastic admonition to "Have a good day!". Without warning or forethought, I scoffed in her general direction. I stopped short of reminding her that gas was over four dollars a gallon, that George Bush has unpleasantly screwed the hell out of the economy and foreign relations, and that for all intent and purposes, it was unclear when I was going to grow up to be a responsible adult. Something I would desperately like to do.

Of course, it's not her fault that I harbor an enormous amount of bitterness toward life right now. I take complete and full responsibility for the fact that, at present, my ability to see the silver lining on silverware has been handicapped by a series of bad life decisions starting around the age of twelve. I decided that instead of festering, and writing happy blogs on MySpace, I'd use this forum to spew some darker VenEm.

So, all that being said, one should not expect that the content herein will be particularly bright and shiny.What it will be, though, is real. Not that the bright and shiny stuff isn't real, but it's only half the story. Half of my story, anyway. I may use some bad words, may misplace anger or blame (or I may rightly place anger or blame, who knows?), I may wallow in self pity, relie to heavily on sarcasm, trash people, or display an appalling ability to live in denial. But, I'll be honest. And maybe in some way at the end of the day...well, we'll see what the end of the day brings...

Why I am feeling compelled to write any of this at all will be discussed in the next post, aptly entitled "Confessing."