Not A Super Hero

zeke

2012-02-05T07:52:00.019-05:00

I went to the opera last night and got home close to midnight. I took Zeke for a late walk in the park - he fell at one point, something that was alarming and terribly heart-breaking when it first started happening months ago, but unfortunately has become a semi-regular thing since then. He ate a few cookies, a couple who was walking their dog saw that he wasn't feeling well and stopped to pet him for a few minutes, then we came upstairs.

He couldn't get comfortable once we got in; he was panting, drooling, and he wouldn't stay in one place - I was wetting his nose with water and he was halfheartedly drinking it from my cupped hand. I held him, but he wouldn't lie down. He licked my ear and the side of my head a few times, and his tongue felt warm. I gave him extra pain medication, and sometime close to three o'clock I went to sleep. A couple of minutes after I closed my eyes, I heard him leave the room and walk down the hall.

I woke up this morning and he wasn't in the room. I looked all around the apartment and it took me a while to find him. He had situated himself behind the drapes in the living room, lying in the corner, behind the drapes and against the radiator, and he was dead. My beautiful friend is gone.

I knew last night that I was going to have to call the vet this morning and go in with him today to ask her to do the unthinkable. I brought him into her office a few days ago and she told me we needed to start thinking about making the decision to euthanize him. It was something I couldn't imagine having to decide, but also a reality I knew had to be dealt with, and soon. I got pain medication for him, and that was three days ago. In a final act of love, Zeke has saved me the heartbreak and misery of having to make the decision to end his life. I'm sorry I went to sleep at all last night. I wish I had held him all night long, told him how much I love him and let him know that he's not alone. He's not alone. He's now with everyone who has ever gone before: Nanny, Cleveland, Frankie, Johnny-Marie, Greg, Tom, Alexandra, Jesus - he will continue to be loved, and he can sleep in the hollow of God's hand. I know that these tears will eventually stop, but there's a hole inside of me that will never go away; a void so absolute, nothing could have prepared me for it. What this sweet and simple animal taught me about love is immeasurable. I'm so blessed to have had him in my life and to have been able to care for him. I wouldn't be who I am without him - he will live in my heart forever. And as sad and disturbing as his passing is, it is strangely comforting to know that wherever he is, he'll be keeping a spot warm for me for when I get there.

one fourteen

2012-01-14T08:49:00.010-05:00

It is bitterly cold outside today, just like it was two years ago on this day, when Frankie died. I remember so clearly working my way across town, on the bus, through the cold and the snow, to the hospice on Second Avenue. I remember the kindness and patience of the staff there - how Frankie would weave in and out of consciousness; doing a dance with one foot in this world and one foot in another. She'd hold my hand and smile, then in an instant, all recognition would leave her face.

I also remember the expanse of the white and grey sky outside her window, the view of snow-covered rooftops during the storms we had that year, and the sound of the cold wind as it whipped past the windows.

It was an arduous struggle to get Frankie into that hospice, but once there, she was cared for and safe, and she passed peacefully.

This year, I'm tending to Zeke. His pathology report has come back suggestive of lymphoma. There can only be a conclusive diagnosis with a biopsy, but I won't put him through that. Even if it is conclusive, I won't choose to give him the treatment. His walking is difficult, his breathing is audible in a way that it's never been before, and he's hardly eating (he wouldn't even eat a burger I cooked for him the other day). I've gotten some wet food that is pretty stinky and has a pâté consistency, and he'll eat some of that, but he hasn't eaten any dry food (kibble) for about a week.

A number of years ago, when Frankie was going through treatment for her ovarian cancer, she stayed with me for a few nights. Zeke snuggled up next to her in the bed, and the two of them slept together for the time she stayed with me. She loved him, claimed that he was more healing than any treatment a doctor could prescribe, and called him "Sweetie-Petey."

This morning, I started Zeke on Prednizone. Hopefully, this will reduce the swelling of his lymph nodes, act as an anti-inflammatory for his arthritis, and increase his appetite.

Zeke and I were introduced to each other eleven years ago, in a pound, in Hyde Park, New York. Though still a young dog at the time, he was fully grown; maybe a year, maybe older. Since then, he's had a very fortunate dog's life, some might even say spoiled; fed home-made food, slept on comfortable beds, walked at least three times a day, and gotten more love and better treatment than most humans. Even with all that, it's hardly payment enough for what he's given me in return. I know that Zeke may not be here for very much longer, but for whatever time he has left, it's my job to make him as comfortable as I can.

sam

2012-01-07T09:33:00.011-05:00

There was a man who used to sleep on the benches on Riverside Drive, across the street from my apartment building. He would sleep there all year long; winter, summer, rain, snow - he was always there. His name was Sam.

Sam was a wiry, dark-skinned, African-American man, probably in his sixties. He always wore a suit-jacket and tie, often a muffler, and carried a small suitcase. He never asked for money. Usually he was quiet and polite, nodding good morning, etc., but on occasion, he would talk to himself loudly or mutter angry and indiscernible things to passersby, perhaps suggestive that he'd missed taking his medication or was having some kind of episode.

Sam used to have a thing going on about the trash cans on the Drive and right inside Riverside park. He would move them around and rearrange them all the time. Often, after having cleaned up after my dog, in the park, I'd find that the trash can where I'd usually toss the baggied refuse had been moved clear across the field from where it usually sat. It also wasn't an uncommon thing to see Sam dragging a heavy metal trash can behind him as he walked up Riverside Drive, or around one of the meandering paths in the park.

Sam lived on the street for years. People would often leave food for him. Once, on my way home from food shopping, I offered him some fruit. He refused it.

People in the neighborhood, the dog people in the park, doormen, etc., always talked about Sam. Some of the talk, mostly from the more recent nouveau riche additions to the neighborhood, was concern at the unpleasantness of such an 'unseemly character' hanging around what was supposed to be a 'nice' neighborhood. But the majority of the talk was curiosity, or even concern about someone who we saw everyday - a neighbor.

About four year ago, during the winter, Sam died. One day, he just wasn't there anymore. There was really no more information about what had happened to him. It might have been because he was ill, it might have been exposure to the elements. No one seemed to know. There were vases of flowers placed in the snow against the wall to the park, and bouquets laid out on benches along the Drive for weeks after his death. There was also a small sign explaining to the folks in the neighborhood that Sam had passed away.

While I don't know if there was ever any confirmation about this, the word was that Sam had an apartment on 79th Street, right off of Riverside, that he used to rent out. He was apparently financially stable, and was once a successful young man, then one day he came home to find that his wife and young daughter had perished in a house fire. He'd been living on the streets since. Whether that's true, or a tragic story that someone made up along the way, I don't know. Certainly, if true, something like that would drastically change a person.

Sam's story suggests an excellent example to the testament that it is best not to judge people by their outward appearances. You just never know...

see the blazing yule before us

2011-12-22T08:59:00.008-05:00

At this time last year, I had just arrived in India. I vividly remember the first breakfast I had after waking up in a small guesthouse in Chennai (Swami Saradananda had ordered breakfast for me the night before, pretty sure that I'd be awake early): pongol and chai spiced coffee. It was so sweet and delicious, the smells and flavors of cardamom and black pepper in the morning was new, exotic, and instantly captivated me. I was thrilled to be starting my small adventure of spiritual exploration and cultural immersion; far away from busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style - at least the holiday style to which I'd always been accustomed.

Last Christmas eve I visited St. Thomas Basilica, a cathedral that is built over the site where St. Thomas is believed to be interred. For me the holiday was quiet, reflective, personal - all very different from the Christmases I'd spent before. More than a small part of me is wishing I could be having a similar experience this year.

This Christmas eve I'll be going into a locked detox ward of a hospital. I'm going in there to hopefully share a message of hope and recovery with some folks who are probably going to be feeling pretty lousy having to spend their Christmas in a place like that - a lucky few might realize the auspicious gift they've been given, but the majority will most probably be sad, resentful, frustrated, even indignant. I'm looking forward to it; it's the part of my holiday plans this year where I can most easily focus on the spirit of giving and the brotherhood of man. The other stuff, the family stuff, is always more difficult for me - and I'll be doing some of that a few days after Christmas.

In previous years I always brought a big bundle of fabulous gifts; all sparkly and well thought out, hoping to impress with the most well-suited and best gifts - I didn't have to necessarily do anything - I could let the gifts speak for me. I didn't have the luxury of doing that this year. This year, the challenge for me will be to try and bring the same spirit of love, service, and open-mindedness to my often deranged family as to the sick and suffering people in the locked ward. Practicing the principles of honesty, faith, tolerance, patience, love, humility, and forgiveness is easier in theory than it is in practice. Even if I'm willing enough to try, I'll be doing better than I have before. If I can add to those principles a glimpse of the quiet, reflective, and personal Christmas experience I had last year in India, then maybe I can even be a demonstration of good will.

working with others

2011-12-07T09:53:00.002-05:00

Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends - this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.

pepper spraying america

2011-11-20T09:17:00.009-05:00

Yesterday police mercilessly pepper-sprayed seated, non-threatening UC Davis students, who, in a bitter twist of irony, where there protesting, among other things, police brutality! The escalating violence by police against Occupy Wall Street protesters has reached new levels of viciousness. It is cowardly, unethical, and unAmerican. These nationwide attacks continue to increase daily, and continue to be antithetical to the constitution. Republican candidates have repeated that the protesters should "get a job," and claim that "These people just want a handout," but it's painfully clear that what's going on is beginning to threaten the foundation of the current Machiavellian capitalist machine. As proof, a memo from lobbying firm, Clark, Lytle Geduldig, Cranord warns that there may be political fallout from growing support for the Occupy movement, and offers advice to its Wall Street clients. The banking industry is getting scared, and while it may take a long while to see any legislative differences come to pass, protesters keep getting arrested and brutally attacked by hired thugs (police). Thugs who may very well be only a paycheck away from joining the protesters whose heads they're currently whacking.

This isn't an America I recognize. I'm proud and heartened by the resolve of these brave protesters, but I'm equally disappointed, disillusioned, and disheartened by my country and its leaders. Watching these happenings unfold strengthens my hope in the human spirit, just as it rips away any glimmer that a quality of life in America for the 99% might get better. My support for the movement remains unwavering. I wish the president and legislative leaders would show some integrity, and demand that our police exhibit characteristics befitting of our country's standards.

We can talk the talk, but apparently find it much more difficult to walk the walk:

"I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal."

- Barack Obama - January 2008

survivor

2011-11-12T09:38:00.021-05:00

Like it or not, reality television is not just for television anymore, it’s become a way of life. And, we, the American people, have turned out to be the Biggest Losers. America’s current cultural default setting of voyeuristically watching sordid manipulated dramas unfold before our eyes is proving to have much more far-reaching consequences than anybody could have ever imagined. The phenomenon of commercially produced competition masquerading as 'reality' has become more than just guilty-pleasure-lowbrow entertainment. In fact, it has so thoroughly influenced and oversaturated our cultural identity, that it’s become difficult to differentiate a game show from a political campaign.

A little more than three years ago, a perky, photogenic, flag-waving, self-proclaimed pit-bull with lipstick entered the national media spotlight, and at the time, it probably didn’t occur to most of us to draw a parallel between her specific brand of mean-spirited, attention-grabbing, political backbiting and America's Next Top Model. But, as time has gone by, and as we've watched her carry her Down’s syndrome baby around like a loaf of bread from one political rally to the next, heard her repeatedly misquote the constitution, watched as her chastity championing teenage daughter got knocked-up by the local bad boy, and listened as her rabid rhetoric became more and more malicious, all in the name of patriotism and Christian values, it began to look as if Sinclair Lewis’s prescient 1935 quote might actually come to pass.

"When fascism comes to America,

it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

Sinclair Lewis

'Real America,' the one of cup holders, mud flaps, and chewing tobacco, was finally getting the representation it had long been lacking, and the grateful middling masses turned up, tuned in, and lifted up their strident and shrill, newfound spokes model with the force of a tsunami – ethics violations be damned!

When the publicity-hungry hockey mom finally relieved herself of her pesky gubernatorial duties, and went on a self-promotional, nation-wide book tour, her supporters didn’t question her deserting her constituents, rather they seemed reinvigorated by her fearless-buck-the-system-confidence. They gathered in malls and town squares crying for smaller government, looser regulations, and called for a firearm in every pocket. They shouted accusations of tyranny and socialism willy-nilly at the current President all to the half-governor's smiling approval. Cameras kept rolling and supporters and critics alike tuned in daily to watch the latest installment of her partisan performance piece.

Political strategists took note of what was capturing the attention of both the media and the discontented voting public, and political contenders acted in kind – loudly courting the far right lunatic fringe with the same strident fear-baiting tenor as the rogue Alaskan. Cable news network pundits, arugula-eating liberal elites, and even old school Republican plutocrats watched aghast as the new rules of campaign strategies took on the character of a Jerry Springer, hootenanny, cage-fight.

At the same time as the moose-hunting-pageant-walking-hockey-mom-media-bus-tour and jamboree was gathering momentum in the nation’s heartlands, our ultra-right leaning Supreme Court weighed in on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. From here on out, there would be no limits on corporate campaign contributions. Essentially, Walmart can now buy the presidency! Of course, this was potentially great news for an uneducated public who believes that Walmart and its ilk are prototypically American. They haven’t been reading the fine print that explains how Walmart has outsourced American jobs to third world nations where cheap labor can be exploited under even slacker regulations than our own. They’re not concerned that Walmart’s produce is flown in from Chile and Costa Rica at the expense of local farmers, and they’d long ago forgotten those mom and pop stores that had to close up shop when behemoth corporations opened their doors with prices that mom and pop couldn’t compete with.

Since then, we've luckily managed to avoid bearing witness to a Trump campaign. Apparently the Donald felt that his real reality television responsibilities outweighed the public's call for his run for office. Instead, however (along with a pack of other irate wingnuts, all clamoring for the Republican nomination), we've got an angry, media hungry Georgia business man, who's made a fortune from a mediocre pizza chain. And if mediocre pizza wasn't enough to substantiate this man's patriotism, his self-righteous, uncompromising insistence that there would be no room for a Muslim in his cabinet, his indignant claims that government regulations inhibit free market advantage, and his hardened no nonsense tone has struck a chord with a certain disgruntled conservative constituency during an economic crisis.

Despite all odds, Cain has managed to stay in the running amid the more seasoned darlings of cable news and talk radio, even grabbing the spotlight away from such legendary lunatics as Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum. In the past weeks, however, four women have come forward with accusations of sexual harassment against the pizza man. With all his bobbing and weaving around the accusations, it's hard to remember that republicans claim to be the party of 'personal responsibility.' Of course, even with all the accusations of Cain's sexual inappropriateness, he continues to use dismissive and misogynistic language; joking about Anita Hill and referring to former Speaker of the House Pelosi as "princess Nancy." One would think that this brazen demonstration of insensitivity and denigration of women when his character is in question would be detrimental to someone in such a public arena, but in the last month the Cain campaign has raised nine million dollars!

Perhaps this may not be so surprising after all when one considers that Cain's attitude seems to fit directly into the groove of the current anti-woman agenda that the Republicans have been so relentlessly pushing forward. It might also make perfect sense in light of the fact that the folks he's appealing to are the very same folks who cheer executions, call for the death of the uninsured, and boo soldiers.

I don't have the interest or energy to expound upon the foolishness of the pizza man's 9-9-9 tax plan (a tax plan shockingly similar to the one that the inhabitants of video game SimCity live under), nor do I care to blather on about the irrationality and idiocy of his proposed immigration reform plan other than to say that it includes not only an electrified fence, but also a moat filled with alligators all along the U.S.-Mexico border (I wish I was making this up). But what I would like to point out is that in his closing statement for one of the Republican debates, Mr. Cain said: "A poet once said, 'Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it's never easy when there's so much on the line."

Actually, the poem that the pizza man chose to quote really isn't a poem at all, it's the theme song from a Pokemon movie! Yes, a candidate for the Republican nomination for the President of the United States of America is quoting Pokemon. Kudos to Mr. Cain for taking our already twisted reality television culture one step further, and entering it into a world of bizarre performance art.

This is what these recent years of championing ignorance and spectacle over intelligence and substance has brought us to.

gut yontif!

2011-10-18T21:55:00.016-04:00

I don't usually like to use this space as a venue to vent my frustrations, but, please, just bear with me for a minute.

For those of you who don't know, this week is Sukkot (or sukkos). I'm not an expert on these things, and there's certainly no shortage of more qualified people to explain this to you, but Sukkot is a Torah mandated festival that involves an outdoor structure that looks like a walled booth with some kind of plant material covering. This structure is called a sukkah, and it is meant to represent the makeshift dwellings that the Jews lived in during the exodus from Egypt. Sukkot also includes repeating specific prayers and blessings, recited while holding a yellow citron (called an Etrog) and a date palm frond (called a Lulav).

Now, if you live in New York City, you are most definitely aware that during this one week of the year there are both stationary and mobile sukkahs strategically located around town. Seriously, who doesn't love a sukkah-mobile? And accompanying these multiple sukkahs are young orthodox Jews carrying Etrogs and Lulavs. Personally, I think it's terrific that these young guys are so committed to their traditions and practices that they wander around town wanting to share the joy of this sacred festival with others. I don't know exactly how it's phrased in the scriptures, but because it is mandated for Jews to take part in this festival, these young orthodox guys ask passersby, "Are you Jewish?" This would be fine too, but several times when I've been asked, "Are you Jewish?" and I've responded, "No." The guy just turns around and goes hunting for the next potential Jew.

Seriously?!

Dude! If you're going to be asking people if they're Jewish, there are most probably going to be a number of people who are going to say, "No." In this case, I would suggest that the appropriate and polite response might be, "Okay, enjoy your afternoon." or "Very well, thanks man. Have a great day." or "Sorry for disturbing you." or "May the love of God be with you." or possibly a handshake and a friendly nod. But somehow me being a non-Jew qualifies me for immediate dismissal. Call me sensitive but this REALLY PISSES ME OFF!

This very scenario happened to me earlier today, and when the young Jew dismissively turned and walked away from me, I wanted to chase the guy down and say, "Hey, haven't you been taught about the teachings of Rabbi Hillel? About how he said, 'That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbors?' What part of that very simple interpretation of the golden rule do you not understand, Putz?

But I didn't. I had a moment. I stopped. I breathed. I remembered that justified indignation is rarely a good idea, and, truth be told, I'm glad that I live in a city where Jews are celebrating this ancient and joyous festival all over town, and encouraging others to join them. So I was able to shift my focus from one of anger to one of gratitude. Seriously, I love seeing a sukkah-mobile working its way down an avenue, and most of all, I love New York.

99%

2011-10-15T21:02:00.026-04:00

The occupiers have been camped out downtown in Zuccotti park for thirty four days. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight, instead the movement is only escalating and gathering momentum. Earlier today, I saw online that #OccupyWallStreet had planned a march from Washington Square park to Times Square. The marchers were scheduled to arrive at Times Square at five o'clock. I was home this afternoon working on some homework, so I walked my dog at around quarter after four, then I headed out the door, and down to Times Square on the subway. As soon as I got above ground at forty second street, I could feel that something big was going on. There was just an electric buzz in the air, I don't know how else to describe it. I crossed from the west side of Broadway over to the other side of forty second, and then I saw them; thousands of protestors marching up seventh avenue from downtown, many of them carrying banners and signs; young people, older people, some with children on their shoulders, some made up as zombies, veterans, union members, nurses, Teamsters, students, thousands of people as far as the eye could see, all gathered to express their grievances and discontent with corporate greed and economic disparity - all gathered at the crossroads of the world beneath blazing electric corporate logos; a brilliant metaphor of we, the people versus them, the gleaming corporate machine.

I was quickly ushered by a cop into a penned off area in the middle of the street between police barricades. I slowly inched my way uptown, trying to get further into the heart of Times Square, but I could barely move because so many people were jammed into the penned in area. Thrilled and excited to be part of this movement as it gathered momentum, I snapped photos and chanted with the crowd, "the whole world is watching!, the whole world is watching!" and "We are the ninety nine percent!, We are the ninety nine percent!" I got bumped into and jostled, and began to feel a little claustrophobic and concerned that I might get caught in the middle of the crowd, so I continued to inch my way uptown. It took me about a half an hour to go the single block to forty third street. Once I got to forty third street, I quickly shot east to sixth avenue to go uptown a few blocks so I could maneuver myself back into the thick of it. Walking up sixth I could see the police presence that I couldn't see when I was in Times Square. The whole avenue was lined with cop cars and cops on motorbikes and a few paddy wagons. There were also countless police on foot, some in riot gear, others with plastic hand ties, and orange crowd control netting.

I turned left onto forty sixth street and started heading west toward the big plaza in the center of Times Square, but about three quarters down the block, I saw that the crowd was so thick that there would be no crossing. I didn't want to get trapped in the middle of it like I was earlier. I got as close to the intersection of Broadway and forty sixth as I could when the police started calling for the crowd to get on the sidewalk. Helicopters could be heard overhead, and still the unrelenting cheers and chants from the people, "We are the ninety nine percent!" The sky was beginning to grow dark, and on the diagonal corner across the plaza, a Bank of America sign blazed brazenly red, back-lighting the impassioned scene below and in between.

The police continued to call for the crowd to get onto the sidewalk. I jostled for position at the curb, craning to watch the action, still trying to take pictures though it was getting too dark for my camera. There was a handsome young cop right in front of me, Officer Campanelli.

Me: "Any idea of how many people have shown up for this? It looks like there's about four or five thousand police here."

Officer Campanelli: "Yeah, there's at least that many of us here. No, they haven't said how many protestors they think are here."

Guy from the crowd: "Where's the Mayor?"

Officer Campanelli: "I dunno. In the Hamptons, eating a steak dinner."

There was some more friendly banter with Officer Campanelli. He told a couple of us how he wasn't supposed to be working tonight, and he'd rather be at home eating dinner. I chatted with a few other people around me too; a guy from Australia who said he fully supported what was going on and that protests have started down under too. I chatted a little with a nurse who was standing next to me, a middle aged Asian woman, who held a hand-written sign that said, "Nurses against corporate corruption." I also spoke with a young Latina, who told me that she's been going down to Liberty Park after work a few days a week since the protests have been going on to show support and solidarity for those who are camped there. She also told me that she wants to go down this week to hear Poland's former President address the crowd (Lech Walesa has said that he supports the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is coming to New York to speak to the protestors!). Then police in riot gear approached from down forty sixth street, some holding their clubs, others with their hands poised atop their pepper spray nozzles. They stretched the width of the street, shoulder to shoulder, and began moving slowly toward the plaza. I noticed police on horseback across the plaza, silhouetted by the Bank of America sign. I silently cursed my camera, knowing it wouldn't read in this darkness. Other cops were walking beside the cops in riot gear, carrying orange police netting, and it looked like they were getting ready for something. I had the horrible thought that the police might start pepper spraying the crowd - it was then that I decided it was time for me to leave.

I knew that there was no way I could make my way through the crowd and get to the subway, so I walked back toward sixth Avenue, and walked up the block to forty seventh through a small plaza between some office buildings. Forty seventh street was also lined with police cars, but I saw no riot gear and no lines of police readying themselves for aggressive confrontation. I walked toward seventh avenue, stopped at the blocked street and looked down from the corner at the crowd. Signs, banners, cheering, people, horses, celebration, madness, mayhem, hope, revolution; all of it perhaps signaling the beginning of the change we were promised and never got. I sidled up seventh avenue, crossed over to Broadway when I could, still constricted by the massive crowds, and made my way to the fiftieth Street subway station.

I'm encouraged by the huge escalation of this movement, and I'm optimistic that this will make some difference. I know that as long as bought politicians continue to decide legislature, nothing can or will change. I'm proud that this movement began in my city. I'm proud of my countrymen and women, and I'm filled with respect and gratitude for the occupiers and their dogged determination and commitment. I can't help thinking that if I were a little younger, or a little braver, I'd be camping out in the street downtown too.

i took the subway to the revolution

2011-10-02T08:40:00.033-04:00

Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Libya, Wall Street; The United States should be set to experience the same sort of grassroots, youth-driven uprising that we’ve recently seen surge in other nations. Yesterday, police led protestors onto the Brooklyn Bridge, penned them off, and then arrested more than 700. This happened just one week after explicit videos of police brutality hit the Internet, showing an unprovoked police captain pepper-spraying a group of young women, as well as numerous excessively violent take-downs of peaceful protestors. While these videos have stirred shock, anger, and allegations of excessive force, they’ve also, I believe, dissuaded older, more middle-of-the-road, and even conservative leaning concerned citizens from joining the fray. People are pissed off. There are distant, and not so distant sounds of underground rumblings getting ready to erupt, and in my view, these numerous unwarranted arrests along with the use of excessive force on peaceful protestors are all part of a systematic strategy to deter people from joining the cause.

Last week, I went downtown to #OccupyWallStreet to see if I could take some pictures, and even show support for the cause. What I found hanging out in Liberty Park was a bunch of mostly young grunge-y looking folks who looked like they might be leftovers from a Lollapalooza festival; shirtless women, pot-smoking kids, boys banging drums, girls braiding one another's hair, etc. The crowd almost immediately erased any feelings of significance or urgency, and gave the whole movement an amateurish, disorganized impression. That was last Sunday, the day after the pepper spray and violent arrest incidents, and the systematic operations of the NYPD seemed to have accomplished their goal of stripping the demonstration of its legitimacy.

At first, I wondered why the police; hard working union folk who make roughly fifty grand a year, would side with the establishment over the principles of the demonstrators. Then it dawned on me that the police work for the Mayor, and the Mayor is a billionaire, who, while perhaps partly responsible for a decrease in crime, is also mostly more concerned with tourist revenue than with the city’s public education or transportation departments. Also this last week, it has come under some public scrutiny that JP Morgan Chase donated an unprecedented 4.6 million dollars to the NYPD, the largest donation in their foundation's history, so it should come as no surprise that the po-po are working for the man rather than the people.

The occupation of Wall Street has been going on for twenty two days now, and it doesn't seem as if there's any end on the near horizon. Even if the police have managed to intermittently make the crowd look like a bunch of disenfranchised misfits, the fact that the Teamsters Union, the New York Transit Workers Union, and even United Airlines pilots joined the protest is compelling evidence of the demonstration's equilateral message. The ramifications of corporate greed, social and economic inequities, and this country's current political oligarchy are worldwide - no one is invulnerable to its consequences. This relatively small movement downtown is only the beginning. It seems that the revolution has started, and this time it will be webevised.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

memorial

2011-09-11T09:04:00.018-04:00

I had to turn it off. Family members are reading the names of their loved ones lost exactly ten years ago this morning. The nation continues to be compelled by this defining moment of our time, as it should be, but I feel the need to resist diving into what seems the somewhat manufactured sentimentality of the moment. Each network has specially designed logos for this week, each news magazine a commemorative cover story - across the board there is a strong encouragement to "remember" - as if what happened could ever be forgotten. Forgive me if this reads as somewhat cynical, but I can't help thinking that the great machine that is our nation's media, economy, war, everything - somehow benefits by the persistent fear of its constituency.

I had been awake only a short time after just a few hours fitful sleep, still reeling from days of endless drug use and little rest. I was watering flowerbeds beside the house on Hollis Street, a block south of Japantown in San Francisco. The bedroom window on the second floor opened, and my boyfriend leaned his head out and shouted down to me, "Hey, come up here. The World Trade Center's not there anymore!" The sun was only just beginning to light up a clear blue sky, and every station on TV was playing footage of the planes flying into the towers over and over.

We had been in the process of moving to an apartment downtown on Sutter Street. In the weeks that followed, I remember sitting on the floor of the empty apartment at dawn, cradling him in my arms as he shook and cried, terrified and convinced that the sounds of early morning garbage trucks were airplanes crashing down the streets of San Francisco. We had both spent the past few years destroying our minds with drugs. The attacks on the towers and the tragedy in New York was calling me home.

I'd been living in California for ten years. Within six months I would be back in New York. I dragged him with me. The country, the city, the two of us, everyone was on high alert. We fought, we lied to each other, cheated, drank excessively, were angry, and were both very unhappy. He didn't stay, he couldn't, I didn't understand it then, but I do now. In a swift clandestine move, he arranged his overnight departure and was gone. He left me in debt, unemployed, unemployable, hurt and confused. I continued to drink and drug for a few more months, spiraling downward to what I've heard described as pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. How obliged I am to that utter humiliation as it gave me the gift of desperation. An acronym that was working in my life when there was nothing else.

In the same way that my life imploded and crashed down, I've been rebuilding at almost the same rate as the site downtown. Wreckage, debris, trauma, grief, illness as a result of the fall - my personal relationship to that day a decade ago stands as a metaphor of my downfall and recovery. Careful and slow rebuilding, brick by brick - each passing day a little more healed - each day a little better.

what's your name?

2011-09-01T23:03:00.010-04:00

Perhaps you've had this experience when ordering a beverage in a crowded Starbucks; you tell the counter person what you'd like to drink, then he or she asks your name before ringing you up and relieving you of your three or four dollars (depending on how fanciful your thirst). Then he or she scribbles your name on the side of a cup, and sets it in its chronological place next to a frantically milk-steaming and syrup-squeezing barista.

When this name-asking business started happening a few years back, and I'll admit, I was going through a rather angry period, my thought process was "Fuck you! This is just another invasion of my privacy. It's none of your fucking business what my name is!" and then I'd resentfully tell the counter person that my name was Mario, or Hezekiah, or Duke. But as this name-asking began to happen on a more regular basis (which also happened to coincide with my angry period merging into my having a more all-around accepting attitude of most things) I started to see that this what's-your-name-system made pretty good sense, in order to avoid any kind of beverage identity confusion when they all wind up sitting there on that little elevated beverage shelf at the far side of the espresso machine, huddled together in their steaming, half-caf, sweetened and unsweetened, non-fat, soy-chai succulence, just waiting for their parched owners to claim them and delicately sip at their deliciousness. So I reluctantly conceded to giving the counter person my name. But after doing this a couple of times, and after hearing my name mindlessly shouted out into the store by the barista, I thought "Not only is it not any of their business what my name is, but now everybody in the store knows my name too!" This indiscriminate announcement of my identity undercut my comfortable sense of New York anonymity to the core. So I started giving the counter people different names, and I noticed that the funnier or more unusual the name, the more they would make eye contact, or smile, or be momentarily taken away from the monotony of their quotidian and mindless money-taking, coffee-making responsibilities. Not only would the initial name exchange elicit a smile or pleasant response, but when the barista read it on the cup, he or she would smile or giggle, and when they shouted it to the store, it was an opportunity for others to smile as well. I don't know that I have the power to make a great many people happy at any one given time, but this miniscule opening may be an opportunity for me to lighten peoples' day, even if just for a moment. I see it as a kind of selfless-service to working folks who might not otherwise be able to get a break from the tedium of their day.

The name I usually give the counter people in this situation is, Pickles. There's something about the silliness, or the incongruity of that name that always makes people smile. "I have a grande Americano with extra room for ... Pickles! (tee hee)."

It works every time.

Today I went into a Starbucks, ordered my beverage, and the young woman behind the counter asked my name. I was a bit surprised as this Starbucks wasn't very crowded, but it was kind of loud, and there were a few people waiting for their drinks to be made. "Pickles," I said. She blankly looked across the counter at me, and paused for a moment before scribbling on the side of the cup. I found this a bit odd, but thought, Oh well, maybe she's just having a bad day. Then, after waiting for a little while with the few other folks at the far end of the counter for our drinks, I noticed that the barista wasn't calling out people's names, he was just calling out the different kinds of drinks that he was making. He called out the name of the drink that I had ordered, and then he placed it on the elevated beverage shelf. I took the drink, and as I walked over to the cream and sugar island against the wall, I read the side of my cup, and it said, Nick.

cowboy

2011-08-22T09:40:00.005-04:00

Just a quick follow-up to the previous post:
(giggle).

sweet jesus in the land of corn

2011-08-15T10:01:00.055-04:00

I've been trying to ignore the yammering asshats in the media lately, take it all in stride, and let their drivel roll off my shoulders, but my disillusionment, disappointment, bewilderment, and anger has been magnified to un-ignorable levels this past week with news from Iowa, and of the band of blathering, rabid right wing lunatics vying for the Republican Presidential nomination. As if political news this summer hasn't been disturbing enough, what with the whole debt ceiling fiasco and the new "super congress" appointed to reduce the deficit, the winner of the Iowa Straw Poll, and the driver of the Republican clown car this week, is none other than Tea Party favorite, Michele Bachmann. Bachmann leads the conservative fringe’s furious call to “take back our country!” (From whom? I wonder.)

Yesterday on “Meet the Press,” she gave America an idea of what a Bachmann Presidency might look like. Here’s a snippet:

Also this weekend, Texas Governor, Rick Perry has announced that he's throwing his cowboy hat into the ring for the Republican nomination. This exciting news (can you detect my sarcasm?) comes just one week after his much publicized prayer rally, where he and 30,000 of his flag-waving, God-fearing supporters asked Jesus to fix the nation's economy (take that separation of church and state). So along with Bachmann and Santorum, it seems that we now have a third candidate who claims to get his political direction from an imaginary sky-friend that talks directly to him.

(For some essential reading on Rick Perry, click here.)

While it might embarrass me to admit to anything that could align me with Bachmann, Santorum, Perry or the like (or any of their supporters), I must share that I admire, respect, and attempt as best as I can to adhere to the teachings of Jesus. I'm fascinated by the parables, the altruistic underpinnings of His philosophy, the etymology involved, the history and the poetry of the library which is the New Testament, and I am challenged, on an almost daily basis, to find personal and practical applications in my life of the principles that Christ taught.

With such a surfeit of accessible low-hanging fruit, it would be easy to embark on a diatribe about the golden rule, doing unto others, etc., the basis upon which most all the major world religions are based, and then compare that to Bachmann and her twisted view of people with a different sexual or gender-perspective orientation than hers. I'll even refrain from going off on her husband, Marcus, his Paul Lynde-like patois, or even the hypocrisy of his mental health clinic, which practices "pray away the gay" therapy, and has received annual Medicaid payments totaling $137,000 since 2005, in addition to $24,000 in federal and state funds. (Bachmann has vociferously denounced the Medicaid program. You can read more about it here.)

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll certainly have noticed that I sometimes have a tendency to wax philosophical about Jesus, Christian values, religious principles, spiritual practices, etc., and then counter that with examples of political deceit, dishonesty, corruption, and hypocrisy. One of the things I find exceedingly interesting is what Jesus is reported to have said about the poor. I wonder how these ideas put forth by Jesus are justified in the minds of those public figures who claim Him (or their followers), and how those justifications correlate with the agenda of those neoconservatives whose commitment it is not to raise taxes on the super-rich or corporations, and to simultaneously cut social spending for the disenfranchised who benefit from such programs.

Here are just a few examples of what JC had to say about the poor:

Matthew 19:21

Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Luke 14:12-14

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

There's also that much repeated bit about it being easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.

It makes me wonder: are these politically-conservative-big-talking-frontrunners living by the same principles outlined in the same texts that I've read from? Or is there yet another set of fundamental regulations and bylaws of which I am unaware, that also fall under the category of "good Christian ethics?"

Poppycock!

The bottom line is that these ruthless and unscrupulous fanatics are pandering to an audience of almost exclusively white evangelical conservative Christians, and they are feeding them exactly what they know they want to hear. If division, voter suppression, demonization of anyone foreign or with brown skin, corporate tax loopholes, eviscerating women's reproductive rights, and ensuring wealthy-white-entitlement is paraded around under the guise of religiosity, then so be it. How is that any different from bigotry and xenophobia being paraded around under the guise of patriotism? It's not. I want to believe that these people are stupid, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. These people are, however, crazy and mean and competitive and driven by personal advancement at any cost, even if that means they need to do it in the name a Jesus whose principles they've thrown under the bus long ago.

It becomes too much for me to grapple with. I'm flustered and I'm tired. I tend to get too ruffled by these nefarious nutters and their hateful shenanigans, too invested in outcomes, and I find I need to blow off steam, or just zone out in any way that I can. For me, the best things that have come out of Iowa this past week (aside from deep-fried butter on a stick) are the embarrassing photos of the aforementioned wing nuts. Perhaps in a few weeks' time there will be a photo of cowboy Rick Perry double-fisting a wiener into his pie-hole. Until then, please enjoy these two priceless moments captured forever in time:

a losing game

2011-07-26T12:35:00.002-04:00

o baby!

2011-07-15T07:16:00.007-04:00

On Wednesday, July 13, at 10:35 am, my youngest sister gave birth to a baby boy. He was four weeks premature, but still weighed in at 6 pounds 8 ounces. His head was turned the wrong way during birth, so he was kinda stuck, and after three difficult hours of pushing, just as they were getting ready to take my sister into the OR for a C-section, they tried one more time with a suction vacuum device, and he arrived; his head a little bruised from the vacuum device, but healthy, very loved, and beautiful.

I don't have any children. This is the first child in my immediate family. I've always felt very protective of both of my sisters, especially my youngest sister, and as I was watching the baby yesterday; introducing myself to the spirit of this brand new little person - watching my sister hold him and feed him, and watching the baby's daddy do the same, I wanted so badly to somehow insure that nothing bad would ever happen to him - to guarantee that no hardship or evil would ever befall this new and beautiful creature. I want to protect him from sickness and disease, from pollutants, from artificially manufactured industrial foods, airborne toxins, and poor environmental conditions - from bullying, from crime, from hurt feelings, from a broken heart, from poverty, from anger, from alcoholism, from unjust legislative decisions, from natural disasters, from indifference, from stupid people.

How vulnerable. How perfect. Perhaps my awe about this whole newborn baby thing might seem naïve or overly romanticized to any of you who have had children, or who have gone through this numerous times, but seeing this little guy, knowing his family's history, understanding the potential for inherited family conditions, and having had extensive personal experience with the maelstrom of family drama and all-around bullshit that he will inevitably have to learn to maneuver through and endure, I want so badly to protect him - to somehow do everything within my power to filter it out so it isn't able to trickle down to him in its full potency.

I will be the best uncle I can be. I can hardly wait to spoil him, educate him, play with him, drag him through museums and amusement parks, bring him to musicals and concerts, give him delicious treats for his belly and his brain and his soul. Whatever else this kid may have, he will also have me to run to, to talk to, and to be with whenever he wants or needs, and it will be my pleasure and my privilege to introduce him to an abundance of things that most ordinary people find it unnecessary to know anything about. If knowledge is indeed power, then I will insure that he has access to an arsenal of knowledge. Yes little one, welcome to the world, I'm your Auntie Mame!

equality

2011-06-25T08:47:00.011-04:00

It's hard to describe the feelings I'm having this morning; joy, relief, satisfaction, disbelief, justification against denial and censure, justice, and surprisingly, even a little melancholy. Last night, after tedious delays and endless yammering on about religious exemption amendments, the New York Senate passed the Marriage Equality Act with a vote of 33 to 29. This ground-breaking and momentous event makes New York the sixth and largest state in the nation to legalize same sex marriage, and ultimately transforms the gay marriage debate nationwide.

The timing is quite serendipitous, as tomorrow is New York's Gay Pride Parade. And as the parade marches down Fifth Avenue, I can only imagine that this year tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of joyful and proud LGBT New Yorkers and their supporters will celebrate like never before.

For the last couple of years I've avoided the parade as the over-sexualization, product placement, celebration and encouragement of unhealthy life choices (drugs, alcohol, prostitution, etc.) presented as an accurate, all-encompassing representation of gay life has made me more than a little uncomfortable. While the Pride Parade has always been a good excuse to don one's feather boa or black leather harness and hot pants, I remember the Pride Parades in the 80s, when it was much smaller and acted more as a showplace for the bravery and pioneer-ism of the community; gay cops, firefighters, teachers, PFLAG, AIDS organizations, etc. And while those groups have never fully disappeared, they seem to have taken a back seat to the more visually sensational groups of leather men, rent boys, drag queens, go-go boys, celebrity DJs, etc. However, my guess is that last night's victory over statewide legislative discrimination will likely bring some political urgency back to the forefront of the festivities.

As for the surprising and nagging melancholy, I can't help but think of those who have been lost over the years, those who weren't even able to see this fight take shape, let alone witness its victory. Those previously mentioned boyfriends, for example - what might they have thought of this historic legislation? And what might it have meant for us as young lovers had the idea of marriage been a possibility at the time? What measure of profound difference would it have made had the state given our relationship the kind of legitimacy that would've allowed us to be viewed as full citizens, whole people. Bittersweet memories mix with pride of country and hope for future generations.

deconstruction

2011-06-13T08:36:00.032-04:00

Almost every morning just before eight, a woman rides her bicycle through Riverside Park with a Siamese cat on her shoulder. This morning she rode slowly by me in the rain, and as she passed, the cat turned it's head; its blue eyes fixed on me as they continued north round the path, and disappeared.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am as a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

Love of art -
Or of nature or of food or of style or of form or of goodness.
Is it enough?

I'm guilty of often entertaining a romantic notion of what my life might've looked like had those contemporaries who left too soon still been here to share it with me. Perhaps we'd have drifted away from each other with either indifference or bitterness. Or maybe we'd have grown closer - our mutual fondness increasing with time, even as we recognized in each other the inevitable wear and decay of our earthly vessels - remembering fondly what we once were; taught, virile, urgent - loving what we had become despite age and physical deterioration.

I never got to see Tom with a potbelly or receding hair, nor was I allowed to make amends for the selfish behavior of a youthful fool. I never saw Greg go grey or watch the skin around his eyes go slack and wrinkle - never was able to tell him how much I loved him; too afraid. I never imagined there wouldn't be time. (I miss showering with him. Holding hands. Talking.) They left too early - them and others too. They will always be young - always beautiful. Lucky to have missed their own physical degeneration - unfortunate not to have experienced their own maturity. I'm lucky to hold my youthful loves forever as they were - hapless not to be able to hold them as grown men.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I ask to be useful - that my experience might help others. I ask to have my difficulties lifted so that I may be of service. I am willing for this to happen. Sometimes it happens - often it does not. I allow the willingness to wash over me just as I allow the discomfort to wash over me. I sit with it. I walk through it - discomfort, sadness, doubt; a hundred forms of self-pity and self-delusion. I endure it knowing all things pass. This too shall pass despite feeling that it will go on forever. What seems insurmountable will undoubtedly prove frivolous with time. Tuesday - Thursday - February - June.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:

The cat's blue eyes burrow holes deep into me as it recedes into the rainy distance on its mistress' shoulder. All-knowing opals; able to see behind the layers of make-up that's taken years to apply.
"I see you, you self-centered fuck. There's no hiding place down here."

Still, fruitless, I wait with an adolescent appetite for a vampire kiss. Bite me, suck me in and govern me. Always a top, never in control. Swallow me. Steal me. Own me. Bridle my potential as you see fit. Make me all that I could never imagine for myself, all that I am not. Good. Whole. Change me. Not gentle; no time for gentleness - the wait has been too long for gentleness. Times a wasting - swing your partner-dosey-doe. Too much has gone unused, untapped, impotent. Open, willing, unable to manipulate any longer, I've surrendered. Take my hand before it crumbles to dust. The sadness and promise of everything that could have been chokes me with remorse, with loss. Without loss I fear I am nothing.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

In tongues of angels and demons and bicycle cats, I blather on the noisy gong, the insistent clapper of a recalcitrant bell. Hear me, hear me, I somersault the antiseptic halls, the blue institutional day rooms and settle in grace. Grace that allows me to be accepted as I am, not the person I imagine myself to be. I may fail more than succeed - again and again and again. I may be weak, messy, irritable, unhappy, sloppy, intensely human. I remain, nonetheless, cradled in the hollow of God's hand - swaddled in unmerited favor. Flawed and forgiven. Encouraged and protected.

rupture

2011-05-29T06:38:00.031-04:00

The rapture didn't happen. As far as I am aware, there were no major intercontinental earthquakes, and if Jesus did come and take people away, he didn't do it on a very large scale.

And so the world goes on, and as it does, I still sometimes find it hard to understand even the simplest things. I often ride the subway and notice young men with wedding bands on, and I think to myself 'how does something like that happen?' I look at their clothes, their build, the thickness or thinness of their wrists, their haircuts, shoes, and I wonder how people get into, and then stay in relationships? When did they make that decision? What does it take to want to share one's life with someone else, and how does anybody negotiate the kind of terms that that kind of arrangement would require? I imagine the kind of person that they're married to, or how long ago they might've met. I wonder if they're happy, if they communicate well and talk freely, or if they are uncomfortable when they go home, and perhaps even feel trapped, stuck, locked into a kind of melancholy existence; committed to staying with someone that they've grown apart from - in sickness and in health, till death do them part. Indebted to their word; to an idea of what they believe they should be.

I imagine their families and their in-laws, and what holidays look like for them. Are there children? Are there pets? I picture them in their pajamas eating breakfast, or checking in with their wives from the office, or making love in the shower. I imagine that they're probably so used to each other that they can anticipate one another's movements and physical responses, even finish each other's sentences, and it is all just beyond my comprehension. It's not just one particular type of person that I notice that makes me think this way, but all different types from every different classification of imaginable socioeconomic background - good looking ones, homely ones, well-dressed ones, fat ones, young ones; it just seems foreign to me - alien - not like something that other people have access to that I don't (which I guess is true, it is still illegal for me to be married in most states), but actually something that I just don't understand - like calculus - I know it is real, I know that there is probably a practical application for it somewhere, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

It's not as if these young men are people I imagine myself being with, it's not like that, I'm not sexually fantasizing about them (not usually anyway), or even envying their position, it's that I can't wrap my head around how people work out their lives in this manner; married, sharing everything about themselves, intimate - for me it is implausible, mind-boggling. It's like people who abuse their children or their pets - I just don't get it. Certainly I can understand frustration and anger and lashing out at those closest to you, but only as the occasional, shameful, and much regretted, wrongdoing or outburst, not as a daily practice. For me it's the same thing with marriage, I understand it in theory, but not in practice. And of course, the fact that it happens to most people makes me feel very different and apart from. Even when I'm in a good mood, contented and happily going about my business and enjoying my day, I can see a guy on the subway, notice his wedding band and this thought process starts, and I begin to feel isolated and withdrawn.

Many married people that I know are unhappy, or are at the very least troubled and challenged in their relationships with their spouses. I find this puzzling. Happy marriages are certainly not something I'd ever had as an example in my childhood (apart from my grandparents, who were from an entirely different generation, and who were married to each other almost a hundred years ago). Successful and happy marriages are not even something I've seen a lot of in my adult life, and yet this paradigm of legally and religiously sanctioned pairing-off continues to be the social norm for most everybody despite relative proof to its success being improbable.

Do these observations suggest that I'm depressed? Possibly. Do they suggest that I'm cynical? Probably. And while difficult and often uncomfortable, this introspective, pensive, downward and darkening spiral encourages me to seek spiritual guidance and comfort. These dark questioning moments strengthen my relationship with an ever elusive Higher Power. Interestingly, it is often in these dark spots that I am most reassured of the intangible existence of that Power. It's easy to say that I am being carried and protected when all is light and effortless, but being brought through darkness with an unswerving knowledge that I am cared for and safe, regardless of my recurring feelings of separateness and isolation, strengthens my spiritual connection. In the same way that beauty can be found in what may be dark or disturbing, I often find grace in times of isolation and doubt.

rapture

2011-05-21T09:36:00.006-04:00

Well, this is it. The apocalypse is nigh and it just doesn't really feel very different from any other day. In fact, after having a couple of cups of coffee, walking the dog, checking my email, looking at the latest updates on facebook, logging into an online dating site, checking the Huffington Post, taking a few phone calls (all regular morning stuff), the idea of being lifted away in the never ending and loving arms of Jesus seems like a really nice thing.

Yes, my routine can become a little numbing, but lately I'm actually happy with what I've been doing. I'm glad that I'm able to be helpful to others, that I get to play a role in other people's recovery. I went to the Tombs last night, and the men there were grateful that I took the time to bring a meeting to them. I'm currently working with a newcomer who is as scared as he is enthusiastic. I'm also working with a recurrent relapser; frustrated, scared, and teaching me so much. Showing up for these guys allows me to feel useful, gives me a sense of purpose, and feeds my self-esteem. And while I'm not anxious or discontented, I am tired, lonely, desirous, frustrated, and I wonder if I'm ever going to feel like a settled grownup; a responsible adult with healthy relationships. I can understand how fanatical religiosity could be a welcomed reprieve from the disenchantment of daily life.

Last week I got together again with the fellow I mentioned in an earlier post. The tall, muscular, semi-regular sex partner with an awkwardly handsome nose who I was wondering if I might get closer with. We had our usual urgent and voracious romp, and then in the comfortable afterglow, he began opening up to me in a way that he never had before. He began telling me about himself, his feelings, etc. I welcomed it, but I also noticed myself shutting down. I was scared. And then, he began talking about other sex partners. A clear and loud mixed message of 'I like you but don't get too close.' Is this what I do? It was like a mirror. A painfully fragmented and cracked mirror. No, I don't talk about other sex partners with people I'm romantically interesting in, but I'm certain that I push people away in any number of other ways. Seriously, I'm a middle-aged man who feels like an adolescent (and often acts like one), and finally all this self examination is beginning to pay off. It would really be a shame if the world ended today right when I feel as if I'm on the precipice of some kind of personal transformation or breakthrough. Of course I know that this is all just practice preparing me for the next thing. I just hope that after all this laborious and painful work that the next thing isn't oblivion.

american exceptionalism

2011-05-04T09:38:00.018-04:00

It's been two days now, and finally some of the fever pitch hoopla over Bin Laden’s demise has quieted a little. Of course, the media frenzy will continue for quite some time, but at least the shouting and dancing in the streets has stopped. I’m very glad that some closure has been brought to a very difficult chapter in our recent history. I'm proud of our President, our country’s intelligence agencies, and our brave servicemen and women who have struck a defining blow against terrorism. An undeniably evil man has been eliminated, and I guess that that’s as good as a rabid animal being put down. But the euphoric celebrations, and the righteous grandstanding have made me a little uneasy.

National pride, quiet contemplation, and prayer are not mutually exclusive. A sober and mindful reverence for all that has been lost might stand as a greater example of American exceptionalism than triumphant celebration.

So while I understand the knee jerk reaction of singing “ding dong the witch is dead,” I also know that hate begets hate, and rejoicing in the violent death of anyone, even an evil mastermind, might very well highlight the basest of human conditions among us.

dancing with myself

2011-04-18T09:11:00.022-04:00

This morning I’ve been reading about the Ryan budget proposal, the President’s response, reality television celebrities posturing for Presidential bids, tornadoes ripping through North Carolina and all other matters of newsworthy events. I might have something to say about any, or all of these things, but I’m feeling more inwardly directed and self-centered today. Really, do my political musings make the slightest difference to anyone or anything anyway? Does anybody even read this stuff? It usually just feels like letting off steam, but that shouldn’t, and doesn’t matter. The strange and beautiful thing about a blog is the false sense of security and simultaneous presumed anonymity in a forum for public self-expression – a paradox of deceptive concealment and full accessibility.

And so, here it is the third week of this, the cruelest month. I sense the brewing and babbling of lilacs, and the unfulfilled promise of desire. Fruit trees are bursting forth with flowering new life, my steps lighten slightly, and my eyes are certainly quicker than my brain (something not exclusive to spring months). Romantic hope springing eternal, however, has previously set me up for disappointment. Just recently I’ve felt especially burned by my own desire and expectation. True, my choices have been... um... questionable at best – to keep doing the same thing and expect different results could be called insane – but I can’t help thinking that something may change, or that I’ve changed, so the results of such folly should at least vary.

I’ve been having an intermittent, ongoing sexual encounter with someone for a while; a dashing, tall and muscular chap with an awkwardly handsome nose, and a seemingly inexhaustible libido. We’ve met maybe once a month or so for the past year. That we’re sexually compatible is irrefutable, and the last few times we’ve been together there has been easy, fun and playful talk. For me, as far as casual sex things go, this should be considered highly successful. But, as rousing and enthusiastic as our meetings have been, I’ve been finding myself hoping that there might be more to explore with this fellow - perhaps something not so casual. Regrettably, the last time we connected, he made it clear (not in so many words) that things are just fine the way they are, and that he’s really not open for anything more emotionally investigative. Alas, a disappointment to be sure. But as fragmentary and emotionally frustrating as our intermittent romps may be, their excitement and animal passion are just too much for me to discard completely at this time.

Acknowledging this lack of emotional involvement has prompted me to turn my attention to the idea of dating rather than hook-ups. Now as one who has never had any success in this arena, the prospect is startling. The stakes are so much higher! If a hook-up goes wrong, you can just stop and say, “Ya’ know, this isn’t really working for me” and then you each go your own way, usually with no hard feelings. But dating? Oh boy, I just don’t feel like I’m prepared for that kind of potentially devastating rejection - all before there’s even been any evidence of a payoff. I realize that this is probably a very modern-male perspective, but considering that our society has been frantically rolling forward on the model of some kind of quick-edit-amazing-race-immediate-gratification-how-to-handbook, it’s really no surprise that I just want to find myself in a loving and successful reciprocal relationship without having had to do any of the footwork to get me there. That sex is so readily available doesn't make wanting to stretch my dating muscles any easier either.

And so, again, here I am in this cruelest of months, my birthday month, single, libidinous, slowly aging, lonely and longing for more. I'm not quite ready to give up the easy fix of the non-committed occasional romp, but I am now, more than ever, willing to risk some emotional investment and start learning how to date, even at this more advanced stage of my career. So I'll keep you posted. In the meantime I'll try to enjoy the newly lightened step and the quickening eye. And, as April showers fall, and the city's parks begin to bring forth a bounty of floral loveliness, I'll try not to slip too far into morbid self-reflection. Who knows? with all this blooming new life I may even find some new life of my own, rise to this new challenge, and surprise myself.

birmingham jail

2011-04-07T18:01:00.018-04:00

I'm taking a class called Practicing Social Criticism, and in it we've been reading numerous politically charged pieces from various perspectives and viewpoints; journal articles, newspaper opinion pages, three different books on socioeconomic status and race, etc. This last week we were given Martin Luther King Jr's letter from a Birmingham jail to his fellow clergy, and were asked to write a short response to it. The professor asked that we direct our response to King himself. I was very challenged by this assignment. I mean, come on, the man is a martyred hero who will forever remain an icon of the civil rights movement, social justice, and American freedom. He has been sainted by the Episcopal Church, and even has a national holiday in his name, fer crissake! He means so much to so many, and his words have been read, reread and scrutinized for the last fifty years. What did I possibly have to offer that could add anything new to the dialogue about King or his work? It seemed daunting and almost sacrilege.

Well... I wrestled with it for a few days before I finally wrote it. I thought that some interesting stuff came up, so I figured I'd share it here as I haven't been so active online lately.

While I am certain that more judicious men than I have informed you of the importance and far-reaching impact of your recent activities, let me reiterate that your actions are undeniably wise and timely. Revolutions are never convenient, and, as has been observed by the great Frederick Douglass, “If there is no struggle, there can be no progress.” The power and beauty of the words in your letter to your fellow clergy are underscored by the resolute commitment of your carrying forward a gospel of social justice. Your words “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” are profound and stirring. As a preacher, I know that words come easily for you, but these are words that linger, and will resonate a message of truth for years to come.

I am writing to you from the future, and it is astonishing and shameful for me to think that only so recently was such marginalization and exclusion encouraged in this country. As I’m writing, I know that I am kidding myself – inequality is still the norm. You will, however, be happy to learn that the world has come a long way; integration is now standard, children of all shades and hues study and play together, just as their parents work together. Mixed-race marriages barely turn heads any longer, and denying someone employment or housing based on race is illegal (though of course, it is still routine). But, the planet, and this country, nevertheless, continue to suffer from regimentally imposed discrimination, and gross disparity between those who have and those who have not.

You will be pleased and surprised to learn that the President of the United States of America is a brown-skinned man. Yes, a man of color has attained the highest elected office in the land. Certainly this is reason to rejoice and measure the strides that have been made toward racial equality. The magnitude and impact of our President’s election marks an historic event and an unparalleled victory for civil rights. But, while our brown-skinned President rode to power on rhetoric that gave hope to both the disenfranchised and progressives alike, his policies have proven to be a continuance of the oligarchic plutocracy that came before him, and which continues to thrive. The disparity between the wealthy and the working poor of our country is greater than it has ever been, and continues to grow exponentially. The current gap between the income of CEOs and that of workers’ wages would make nineteenth century robber barons blush.

Everyday our President sits across from a bust of your likeness in our country’s oval office, and everyday your legacy is abused. The influence of your life and work continue to propel convincing testimony, but as long as we, as a nation, continue to value the rights and livelihood of the CEO over that of the worker, the true meaning of your message will not have been heard. As long as we continue to value the lives of Christians over Muslims your message will not have been heard. As long as we continue to value the lives and rights of heterosexuals over homosexuals your message will not have been heard. As long as we continue to value the lives of Israelis over Palestinians your message will not have been heard. As long as we continue to value the lives of civilians in Libya over those in Darfur, or Bahrain, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire your message will not have been heard. The spiritual life is not a theory – it must be lived everyday. This is something that you know and something that you did.

Forty-three years ago this week you were gunned down and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. Painfully and ironically you were in Memphis supporting worker’s collective bargaining rights, an issue very much currently at stake, as a new breed of far-right conservatives attempt to strip union workers of their collective bargaining rights in the name of corporate greed. While today the issues of race are not central to the fight, an oligarchic institutional structure continues to oppress and intimidate the working poor as they threaten to lock inequality into law.

How prophetic too that your letter was addressed to clergy – today the Western world suffers from a spiritual malnutrition. Prejudice and hate continue to be preached from pulpits across our nation. Certainly there are men and women of faith who are committed to interpreting the teachings of Jesus as a call to social justice, but many who call themselves “Christian,” and claim the gospel of Christ also demand their own privilege and superiority. These Christians-in-name-only pervert scripture to further their own twisted agendas. Recently, one of them has publicly burned the sacred scriptures of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and many others continue to regularly incite hatred towards our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters, as well as provoke sanctimonious anger at immigrants who have come to this country in pursuit of the promise of the principles that our great nation was founded on.

“‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ (Matthew 25: 40)"

Oh, how this most fundamental law of all sacred teachings has been squandered!

From as far back as Rabbi Hillel’s interpretation of the Torah: “"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.," up until today, the golden rule has always been the most vital and principal seed from which all religious teachings have blossomed.

Unfortunately today, many who claim him rarely follow the example of Jesus too closely. I would much prefer to see a sermon than to hear one, and your diligence and sacrifice have shown the world what it means to be Christian; not just on Sunday mornings, bowing one’s head to empty dogma and reeling in sentiment, but by living a life that was the manifestation of the living God of Love – a daily practice of advocacy, decency, courage, and compassion as basic values.

The fight to expose hypocrisy and injustice proceeds, and your actions continue to stand as the benchmark of personal accountability to virtue and benevolence. The unending resolve that you’ve demonstrated stands as a testimony to the fact that the life of one man is equal to that of any other. And your example of civil disobedience echoes the empowering message that a man’s back can only be ridden when it is bent – this message transcends time and resounds to the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, workers, or anyone else who suffers unnecessarily under a corrupt authority. Your work and your life are a living extension of the Blood that was shed on Calvary – Blood which was shed not solely for Christians, but for the extended family of man.

liz

2011-03-24T07:33:00.016-04:00

The passing of Elizabeth Taylor saddens me. Few people have led more interesting or privileged lives than she did. True, she hadn't worked in front of the camera in years, nor had she been very active recently, as she'd been ill and infirm for the past few years. When she left this world yesterday morning she was wealthy, world famous, and surrounded by her family. Certainly, sadder and more tragic deaths happen every day. However, Elizabeth Taylor's death stands as a reminder that time is passing and the world continues to change.

Celebrity is everywhere, yet it seems to have less and less meaning. Elizabeth Taylor's face will forever remain iconic, just as her name will remain synonymous with the words Movie Star. Yesterday the world lost one of its brightest shining stars. In a time when reality television makes celebrities out of contestants, and anyone, anywhere has the ability to follow a “star’s” twitter feed, or watch movies on their hand-held devices, the era of the larger-than-life movie star is gone forever. Taylor was the product of another era - a woman who grew up in the spotlight, and lived under the weight of the enormity of her fame since childhood. When mediums and tastes changed, she didn’t recede into obscurity or use her celebrity for personal gain, rather she wielded her celebrity like a weapon, bravely and unwaveringly speaking out for people with AIDS when no one else would do it - when it was wildly unpopular. She fought tirelessly for AIDS awareness, leaving AMFAR as her legacy, an organization that couldn’t have happened without her. She was a beacon of glamor, humanitarianism, and compassion. She saved lives, she made people feel loved, she made a difference.

I’m not sad because a dazzlingly beautiful academy award winning movie star died. I’m not sad because the death of this great lady is a reminder of the impermanence of beauty and of the inevitability of decay. I’m sad because without the presence of this unique, shining spirit – the world is a little less vibrant today, a little less hopeful.

prayers for japan

2011-03-14T09:04:00.008-04:00

redcross.org
or text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 from your phone

shame

2011-03-10T08:54:00.008-05:00

I haven't written anything in a while because I feel like I'm really at a loss for what to say lately. It's certainly not that I don't have opinions about what's been going on in the world, but I'm so disheartened by the state of my country that I feel I might only be venting my anger and frustration if I took to the blog with my feelings.

The anti union bill that was illegally pushed through in Wisconsin last night not only wages a class war on America's workers, but is a travesty to American democracy. The Macarthy-istic hearings of Representative Peter King in Washington beginning this morning is an embarrassment in the face of our country's commitment to the freedom of religion and is no more than a legally sanctioned, thinly veiled witchhunt against Muslim Americans. The commitment of House Republicans to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is a giant step backwards in terms of civil rights. I've signed numerous online petitions, posted countless articles and links on facebook to try and educate all my friends to these recent injustices, and yammered on with like-minded folks about how these transgressions of the right plan to strip our nation of the very principles on which it was founded. Heck, I've even emailed the White House! My feelings of powerlessness have almost overwhelmed me to the point of wanting to put my head in the sand, or at the very least overeat, and hideout in movie theaters all day, every day.

I am infuriated by the unjust, back-handed, and short-sighted moves of the "new breed" that have recently been elected to power. I'm also embarrassed and ashamed of my country. I am, however, holding onto the slightest sliver of hope that these recent sociopathic overreaches of power by the far right will backfire in their faces, and that the working poor who were suckered into supporting them by having their anger exploited will wake up to the fact that they've been used as pawns, and see these heartless creeps for what they are - criminals. Perhaps their anger and resolve, as witnessed these past weeks in Madison Wisconsin, will be properly directed and make a difference.

Well, I've broken the silence and I've gotten a chance to express why I've been so quiet lately. I don't want you to think I'm apathetic, just terribly, terribly frustrated.

don't be mine

2011-02-11T08:10:00.012-05:00

Several months ago I flirted with a guy in an eyeglass shop. He was handsome and playful, and surprisingly, he was responding to me, so I gave him my number. Pretty bold move, I thought. At least it was the kind of move that I hadn't made in a long time. Well, he didn't call and I thought nothing of it. Then several weeks later I get a text message from some number I don't recognize. You get the picture.

So he starts texting me and sending me suggestive photos of himself periodically. Certainly I'm interested, as I've already mentioned, this guy is really handsome. But our schedules never quite work out and for one reason or another it doesn't happen. Earlier this week he gets really serious (or horny, as the case may be) and sends me a couple of photos that are more than suggestive, along with a few very specific text messages.

Up to this point, we haven't had anything more than the most cursory phone conversation; what's your work schedule this week?, This cold weather is way too much for me, stuff like that. So I call him. I tell him that I'm definitely interested in carrying on further, but that if we're going to be entering into an arrangement of this nature (notice how I can't bring myself to use the word relationship - interesting) he needs to know that I'm HIV positive. I'm very healthy and this isn't really a great concern, but for myself, I need to be honest and up front about my situation, and if this is a deal-breaker, I totally understand.

There was silence on the other end of the line - just long enough for me to be uncomfortable. So, I tell him that he doesn't need to say anything, I totally understand, I didn't mean to make him feel awkward, there are no hard feelings. But he stops me and says, no, he's positive too and he can't believe how honest I was being and that he's really surprised and really appreciates it.

Well, needless to say, I'm getting pretty excited at the prospect of this; handsome, playful, also HIV positive, appreciates honesty, libidinous. We arrange to meet during his next day off. I show up at the agreed upon spot at the appointed time, and he's not there. I give him about 15 minutes, then I text him. He's on his way. Fine. He shows up and tells me that it turns out he has to work after all. (huh? you couldn't have told me this earlier?) We sit down for a quick coffee. He doesn't seem to think that his last minute change of schedule, or the fact that he's possibly inconvenienced me at all is worth more than the most superficial apology, but he nervously rattles on about himself, his work, how he hates New York winters, etc.

Now, I don't know where or when I've acquired this skill, but I managed not to say much of anything. I actually listened, and while I was listening I realized that this guy is a completely self-centered flake, and not the kind of person I need to complicate my life with by entering into an "arrangement", no matter how casual.

I am very much aware that Monday is Valentines day, and I would very much enjoy being the object of someone's attention and romantic fantasies as much as the next guy. But at what cost? I'm so glad that lately I am able to notice my own personal growth. When after this rather rushed and disappointing coffee date (was that really a date), I experienced a wave of disappointment and self-pity, it was as if I had walked through a curtain, and once I realized what it was, I had already passed through it. This is a new and most welcomed phenomenon. There was a time, probably not too long ago, when I would have used this episode as self-pity fodder for weeks. The simple truth is that drama of that nature just doesn't interest me anymore.

So I may not be getting any flowers next week, and I'm not jewelery shopping for that 'special someone,' but things seem to be shifting, and my heart seems to be opening in ways I previously couldn't have imagined.

re entry

2011-02-05T14:00:00.007-05:00

It's been almost two weeks since I've been home, and I'm finding that readjusting to my normal life is more challenging than I would have expected. Perhaps I wouldn't find it to be quite so troublesome if it weren't the dead of winter, but the relentless cold and ice isn't making my transition any easier.

I got back into town last Monday afternoon, and had my first class last Tuesday afternoon - the very next day. This is what I would call hitting the ground running. I'm glad that I didn't have a long period of downtime with nothing to do. This forced me to get over any jet lag I may have had, and also made me feel like I had some sort of purpose for braving the persistent bad weather.

I'm trying to hold on to some sense of the serenity that I found on my trip. Not that I was blissed-out the whole time, but I do feel that I did achieve some modicum of spiritual connectedness that had previously evaded me. Even though I continue to mindfully pause, breathe, and ask for Divine guidance, the challenge of finding a practical application for this practice in the face of everyday life seems, at times, almost insurmountable. When I fail, I try to forgive myself, and promise that I'll do better next time.

Being back in the daily swing of dog walking, school, homework, phone calls, meetings, service commitments, speaking engagements, and other people's drama could derail the most serene of Yogis, let alone someone with an imperfect and sloppy spiritual practice, like myself. I know that there are tools that I can add to my daily practice that might help me better maneuver my way through these difficult days.

I haven't located a yoga class yet, like I promised myself I would do, but that promise still stands. I have, however, continued my daily meditation and prayer practice, and I know that being of service to others always - ALWAYS - helps me to get over any personal hump I may be experiencing. So with this in mind, tonight I'm going to speak at the locked-down detox unit of a hospital, and a few days ago I went downtown to the Department of Corrections offices, in lower Manhattan, and spent a couple of hours filling out forms and getting fingerprinted for my new corrections commitment at the Tombs (the colloquial name for the Manhattan detention complex).

I recently read a quote that I thought was rather provocative and relevant to this topic of service, by the 20th century Taoist philosopher, Wei Wu Wei:

Why are you unhappy?

Because 99.9 per cent

Of everything you think,

And of everything you do,

Is for yourself —

And there isn't one.

pickles

2011-01-24T20:09:00.006-05:00

After parting company with my Auntie Swamiji, I had few opportunities to socialize with wealthy Indians or Indians of the higher classes. Of course, young people and teenagers from all social echelons will go to parks, beaches, coffee houses, etc, but for the most part, wealthier and higher-class Indians do not go outside in the heat, or sit around in public places. Unless I was attending a special function or eating at an upscale restaurant, the majority of my encounters were with working class or poor Indian people.

I did have a most enjoyable encounter with a lovely lady from Andhra Pradesh. I was eating at the Saravana Bhavan in Munnar, when this lovely lady, who was traveling with her family, began sharing her delicious homemade pickles with the other diners at the restaurant. (Tomato, ginger, and gooseberry pickles - the ginger was especially delightful.)

Another time at another restaurant, a heavy-set woman in an ornate saree approached me and said,
"Where are you coming?"
Confused, I didn't answer, only caught myself staring at the cinnamon colored rolls of her belly peeking out from the side of her saree. She repeated herself more loudly as if I were deaf, "WHERE ARE YOU COMING?"
"The United States," I responded.
Satisfied, she said, "Obama," and turned away.

incredible !ndia

2011-01-21T04:24:00.013-05:00

Sometimes in the mornings, before the cacophony of traffic horns begin, it is possible to hear the squawking of birds, the bleating of goats, and even the voices of the fishermen barely a block away. If I sit very quietly, I can even make out the sounds of dry bristles crossing stone, as women all over town sweep streets and door-steps. The acrid smell of sea air mixes with fish, burning garbage, urine, dust, and damp towels - surprisingly not unpleasant, it is thick and lingers over the pavement like a hat. Soon the heat will burn most of these smells away, and only the most intense of them will linger and grow as the day continues.

I am back in Fort Cochin, taking a few days to relax by myself before I head back home to school, family, cold weather, responsibility - the real world.

I've easily settled into the momentum of this lazy tourist town, and have managed not to let the Western tourists bother me too much. During the days I've ventured away from the center of things, explored, shopped, and at night I've come back to drink fresh lime/ginger sodas and play on the internet at cafes like this one, crowded with young Europeans, skyping, giggling, and facebooking in skimpy clothing, inappropriate for anyplace else in India but here.

I've happened upon a few really good places to eat; I ventured across the bay by ferry to Ernakulam a few times and had some really good, authentic Kerala thali, served on a banana leaf with the most delicious homemade curd (yogurt) I've ever had. I've visited and revisited two nearby veg hotels; one with consistently good dosa, chai, and a friendly waiter, the other with tasty sambar, loaded with green chilis, and spicy mango pickle. The latter is run by a gnarled old man who smiles at me through crooked teeth, and seems to spend most of his time angrily chasing goats away from the front of his shop with an empty plastic water bottle. I've even got some friendly banter going with a few of the local Kashmiri gift shop guys.

This afternoon, I went to the Jain temple in Mattancherry, and sat quietly in the peaceful, pigeon-filled garden of the temple courtyard. Jainism is an ancient, Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Apparently, it was the Jains that educated Ghandi in the concept of Ahimsa, the practice of non-violence. Something we might all benefit from studying further.

I have a very short time left here, and I'm drinking in as much as I can. I'm sure that just a few days in the bitterly cold streets of New York will make this sweltering backdrop of watercolored plaster and spices a feathery memory.

Seemingly everything about this country is a paradox: The country is as filled with natural beauty as it is with garbage. Cows and other animal life is sacred, but cats, goats, and dogs go hungry, cowering and scurrying between careening rickshaws and motorcycles. People are courteous and friendly, yet there is no sense of personal space, orderly conduct, waiting one's turn, or traffic rules. You will never hear someone say, "excuse me" if they have bumped into you or pushed you aside. But that very same person will say in the most archaic, and overly polite book English, "I hope that you are having blessings through the day, and that God brings you to your family with much safety and happiness."

One afternoon, while I was walking in Pondicherry, wearing a short sleeved T-shirt (something I've rarely done since then), a man walked up to me and, nodding toward my tattooed arm said: "Excuse me, Sir. Is it possible that I might capture your arm inside my camera?"

the hills are alive

2011-01-11T09:49:00.008-05:00

I am in Munnar, in the hill stations high in the Western Ghats, among the tea estates and cardamom plantations. The landscape is unspeakably beautiful, but characteristic of India, its beauty stands in sharp contrast with the trash along the sides of the twisting roads, and the painfully fractured infrastructure of the region.

It is easily thirty degrees colder here than down by the coast where it was blisteringly hot during the day and humid and uncomfortable at night. I walked about six-hundred meters down the twisting road to a "veg hotel," where I had a fresh lime soda and a lovely South Indian thali served to me by an angel-faced boy of about sixteen. I mashed the rice and vegetables around with my fingers, trying to form firm balls of food that wouldn't fall apart as I brought them up to my mouth. I mixed the last of my rice and sambar mixture with some spicy lemon pickle and curd, and was finished. My round metal plate was cleared by another angel-faced boy of about eleven (probably the older one's brother), who shyly giggled and avoided eye contact with me as he expertly balanced the ten or twelve stainless steel cups atop the round plate, along with the soda glass.

I left the older waiter a tip of ten rupees, the equivalent of about twenty-three cents, and he beamed at me, and slightly bowed with his right hand over his heart. It is embarrassing to me how such a small amount of money can mean so much to some of the people here. I've never been more aware of how entitled I am, or of how much I take for granted.

Even colder after dinner, I wrapped myself in my shawl and walked back to the inn along the side of the twisting road. Looking up, the stars appeared as diamonds on a black velvet sky. A crescent moon hung dangerously close to a nearby mountaintop. Like a jolt, I thought of Frankie. How she would have been entranced with this country and this trip. I thought about where I was a year ago. Holding her hand and talking to her as she slowly and delicately slipped away - further and further each day until there was nothing left. The stars twinkled. It was as if she knew, as if she was winking at me.

travels with my aunt

2011-01-09T23:50:00.008-05:00

Saradananda and I parted company yesterday. She is off to an ayurvedic clinic for two weeks and I am now traveling on my own. I feel I've been given the best possible introduction to Indian foods, behavior, etiquette, tradition, etc... and am now able to manage most Indian customs on my own.

I arrived in Fort Cochin yesterday afternoon by ferry. Fort Cochin is the old town, on a small peninsula, in the port town of Ernakulam. A hub of the Malabar coast spice trade since the time of the Egyptians. It was colonized in the 1500s by the Portuguese. Fort Cochin's Portuguese colonialism is to India's southern west coast what Pondicherry's French colonialism is to India's southern east coast. Proud, aging, Portuguese colonial architecture and churches stand in beautiful decay from countless years of sea-air and humidity.

Unfortunately, when I stepped off the ferry, it was painfully clear that this is no longer an authentic Indian town. The streets are literally teeming with rickshaw drivers saying, "Sir, need a room," "Good cheap room," "Air condition room." And the little side streets are chock-a-block with Kashmiri gift shops and restaurants where I wouldn't trust the food.

Surprisingly, I've seen few Hindus here in Fort Cochin. The majority of the people here seem to be either Christian or Muslim. I woke up early this morning and took an exploratory walk in the opposite direction from the tourist trade, but even there on the Indian side of town, the orientation seemed to be predominantly Christian and Muslim. Of course, this being India, I saw a shrine, in front of a Catholic Orthodox Syrian Church (huh?), where a man was offering flowers to a statue of the Blessed Mother. Everyone in this country is in some state of worship - it's really rather wonderful.

This afternoon, I will walk across to the other side of the peninsula and check out "Jew Town," the site of the oldest Synagogue in the British Commonwealth (Jews on the Malabar coast have roots dating back to the time of King Solomon). Tomorrow, I will head up to the mountains with a new friend and be glad to say goodbye to tourist-ville.

I have a deep sense of gratitude to my Aunt Swamiji, who has prepared me well for traveling in this remarkable country.

temple town

2011-01-04T02:31:00.011-05:00

The other night Saradananda and I went to the temple on the other side of the mountain. Arunachaleswarar temple in Tiruvannamalai is one of the oldest temples in all of India. It is located at the base of Mount Arunachala, on the opposite side of the mountain from the Ramana ashram. Mount Arunachala, as I've written in earlier posts, is the sacred hill thought to be the earthly manifestation of the Lord Shiva. Swami Saradananda arranged for a priest to show us around the temple (she really does have connections). There were very few other Westerners there. Of the HUNDREDS of people there, I think I saw 3 or 4 Westerners, but many, many people on pilgrimage. Families sitting inside the temple grounds eating, children playing, and, oh yes, monkeys climbing atop the tall towers above the temple squares.

The temple is unbelievably huge - 24 acres! It is a Shiva temple (being at the base of the sacred mountain, this only makes sense), but before we went into the center section of the temple, it is a series of concentric squares, we made an offering to Lord Ganesha of flowers and coconuts (Ganesha is present at every temple, he is the remover of obstacles and the son of Shiva). The coconuts are smashed as a symbol of smashing one's ego before God! and the coconut water inside is poured over the shrine. Oil lamps illuminate the shrines and the priests rub burnt sandalwood ashes on your forehead and ground hibiscus on your third eye. And this was only a smaller outer shrine!

The priest then took us inside the main center temple, a extremely rare opportunity for Westerners (Westerners have a history of disrespecting others' traditions; not dressing appropriately, taking pictures of sacred things, etc... I've also been told that there is the recent concern of terrorists entering the temples). He led us past the very long lines of people waiting to "see" the God, opened the gate of the inner sanctum itself and allowed us inside (unheard of!).

The indescribable beauty, the intense energy, and the heat inside the sanctum is unimaginable. There, we offered flowers to Lord Shiva, ate prasad (prasad is food that has been offered to the gods and blessed, their nutrients are not needed by the Gods, so they are given back to the people), had blessed coconut water dribbled over our heads, and had garlands of flowers laid around our necks!

Then, as if that wasn't enough, we were brought to the separate shrine of Shiva's wife Parvati - a smaller, but equally impressive ancient stone shrine inside the same temple, just beyond Shiva's large center shrine. There, we were also brought into the inner sanctum past hoards of pilgrims and worshipers.

The priest was telling us how the old traditions are being lost to the new ways of the west - that young Indians are leaving their traditions to go to Europe and America for opportunity. He said it was a joy to be able to show these traditions to Westerners who were interested in the old, sacred traditions of India.

I am aware of what a rare and special experience I am having here, and I know how truly blessed I am.

Then the priest said, "It is not for you to decide when to go to see God, but rather when God decides it is the right time for you to see."

uphill journey

2011-01-01T09:00:00.017-05:00

How could I remain in Tiruvannamalai and not take advantage of the rich spiritual tradition of this town? Well, I couldn't. So, this afternoon, I had my own small pilgrimage up Arunachala to the cave where Ramana Maharshi spent seventeen years, and attained moksha (an enlightened state of detachment from all material things in life, beyond caste or suffering).

I climbed the long and rocky path up the sacred hill in the afternoon heat, wearing only my cheap, Chinatown flip-flops (a.k.a. chancletas, or chappals in India). Sweat dripped in my eyes and ran down my back as the red dust colored my feet a rich terracotta. Wild dogs spotted the path, some lounging in the shade on the side of the path, scratching themselves or sleeping, some chasing each other across the rocky trail. I also passed numerous other spiritual pilgrims; a few Westerners in T-shirts, like myself, but most in dhotis or full saris.

About forty five minutes into the walk, monkeys began descending from the trees and converging on the path. These were not the small mischievous monkeys I'd seen before, but rather, slower, lumbering, relaxed monkeys the size of ten year old children. Black primate faces with silver-gray, spiky Mohawks atop their heads. I was frightened and slowed down, but then I saw an Indian couple walk by a large one who just ignored them as they passed. Nervously, I sidled past the long tailed, lazy fellow, and he ignored me too.

I stopped to admire the view of Tiruvannamalai and the temple below, drenched and wishing I had brought water with me. As I escalated, the monkey population increased, and the dog population dwindled. Finally, I reached the cave, walked through an archway where, above, mischievous little monkeys were eating banana peels and picking things off each other. I removed my chappels before climbing the few steps to the cave (it's called a cave but it's really more of a stone dwelling built into the rock-face on the side of the hill), and entered a cool and peaceful little stone hut where a number of people were sitting in silent meditation before a flame and a picture of Ramana. Flowers lay before his portrait, offerings as if to a deity or god. I joined the people in the cool dark room and sat silently as my wet T-shirt stuck to the trunk of my body. My perspiration slowed, so did my heartbeat and my thoughts. I felt an unexpected peace wash over me.

When I allow myself to concentrate on the absence of thought, I can feel my breathing slow and deepen, the awareness of my physical condition becomes heightened, and I get closer to achieving an incongruous combination of self-awareness and freedom from self. I can quiet the mind and watch thoughts float by and linger momentarily, like notes of a melody played from a neighboring house, then just as easily they float away.

After a while, maybe a half hour, maybe more, I respectfully bowed to the image of the enlightened one and left the cave. Cooler now, I started down the rocky trail towards the ashram below. Now, chappals in hand, I stepped carefully in my bare feet. More monkeys, and a flurry of contradictory thoughts. These were not the floating thoughts that easily come and go like gentle breezes, but rather stubborn, nagging reflections. Had I not just had some kind of spiritual experience? Why now was I thinking about the young British boy from yesterday's yoga class? I had talked to him for only a few minutes, and quickly assessed him to be about as intellectually keen as a box of hair. Sweet, age-inappropriate, lovely to look at, and almost painfully simple; the exact type of fellow that usually sets me salivating like a hungry predator. Earlier in the day he'd waved at me from across the main road in town, a vacant idiot grin plastered across his pretty face. Would I see him again? Might I invite him to sit and have some chai, and then? My mind kept snapping back and I wrestled with these needling thoughts as with a recalcitrant umbrella. The visual details from yesterday's class burned into my memory and repeated; his lean flexible body, soft blond beard, the gentle curve of his throat, the arch of his feet.

Noticing physical beauty is one thing, not being able to appreciate the present moment because of some sexual preoccupation is another. I don't even think my preoccupation was necessarily sexual. It may have just been a persistant old idea. Here I am, descending the path of a spiritual pilgrimage, having just meditated on sacred ground, surrounded by nature, beauty, and even monkeys!, yet I remain enslaved by an old sexual idea.

Is this ever something I can be relieved of?

I pray daily to be relieved of the bondage of self. I know that to be happy, joyous, and free I must be willing to "let go of my old ideas absolutely." Knowing this, being willing to do it, and being able to do it are concepts that remain distant from each other, long rocky trails apart. I may visit the location, but moksha, even a temporary encounter with it, remains elusive.

two zero one one

2010-12-31T08:50:00.011-05:00

It's new years eve. I'm sitting in the internet spot with small lizards crawling up the wall beside me. Saradananda and I have extended our stay in Tiruvannamalai because all the hotels are booked in Madurai. We plan on traveling south Sunday morning.

While scanning the bulletin board at the chai shop across from the ashram, I noticed a small hand-written note that said: "Friend of Bill's? Let's share some experience, strength , and hope," with a phone number. So of course, I called it.

It was arranged that a rickshaw would pick me up at the main gates of the ashrama. A British gentleman, donned in gauze-y shawl and loose cotton pajama pants (what every westerner wears here) approached and said my name. So off I was whisked in Rickshaw, chatting happily with this new found "Friend of Bill's." It turns out that he is just visiting for a few weeks with his friend, the women with whom I spoke on the phone. It was her home that we were off to.

About a half hour into the bumpy ride, we arrived at a farm ten kilometers out of town. The farm is run by a lovely Tamil family. There is a small school house on the farm, where another Western ex-pat, whom I didn't meet, is teaching local children to use computers. I then met a very enthusiastic, British, Red-henna haired, and sari-clad woman. I was shown around the farm, introduced to the family, the three of us had tea, chatted, and then had a wonderful, small, and very powerful meeting. We sat with Arunchala glowing blue in the distance with tears in our eyes, as we marveled about the miracles that have taken place in our lives, and the series of events that had led us to that very spot.

I was invited to stay for dinner, which was a traditional Southern Indian meal, cooked by the girls on the farm (tomato rice, sambar, coconut chutney). Then I was sent home down the long, bumpy road to town in a rickety rickshaw, and am now filled with gratitude and wonder. What an extraordinary way to say goodbye to another year, and hello to infinite possibility.

tiruvannamalai

2010-12-30T05:02:00.006-05:00

I have been in India eight days, and already I have had a small lifetime's worth of experiences. Right now, I am at the internet spot across the road from the Sri Ramanashram in Tiruvannamalai. It is an old ashram settled at the base of Mount Arunachala, a mountain thought by many Hindus to be the earthly manifestation of the god Shiva. Tiruvannamalai is a rather small town with a big ashram and a HUGE temple, a pilgrimage destination for many Hindus, as well as other spiritual seekers.

In Chennai, on Christmas eve, I prayed in the tomb, beneath the basilica, where the remains of St Thomas are interred. In Pondicherry, I was blessed by an elephant (after I fed him a banana and a lotus blossom), I was also able to stroke his velvety trunk. I watched the sun rise pink over the Bay of Bengal while drinking strong, sweet, Indian coffee. In Auroville, I was actually able to meditate inside the Matrimandir, a privilege usually only given to residents of Auroville (traveling with a connected Swami has quite a few benefits). And I drank chai with a handsome Kashmiri, who had a silver tongue and the eyes of a devil! Oh yes, and so far I've managed to survive some of the most terrifying traffic in the world. HONK!

The food is wonderful and spicy (even breakfast), though it does take a while to get used to eating with no utensils, only one's right hand.

India is beautiful and awful - terrifying, comforting, wonderful, peaceful, and disturbing. It is truly a land of contradictions.

countdown

2010-12-19T14:08:00.004-05:00

I'm nervous, and excited, and a little scared. Funny - not so much about being immersed in a different culture in unfamiliar surroundings as much as being challenged spiritually. I have been looking around the website of the ashram in Kerala where I'll be staying, and it really does seems to cater to folks with a much more advanced spiritual practice then I have (understatement).

I feel that I've done all I can to prepare for the trip; I've packed very lightly, I've made several drugstore trips, I've arranged for my plants to be watered and my pets to be cared for, and I've also spoken to all the folks who I usually talk to everyday about keeping active in a support network while I'm away. I have contact numbers and sunblock...

Yesterday I found myself intermittently acting like a jerk and bursting into tears for no apparent reason. Everything is prepared and I only need to walk through one moment to the next to have a new experience unfold for me. Now to breathe, admit powerlessness, and surrender. This is what jumping off a cliff must feel like.

Please, Oh great Remover of obstacles, allow me to get out of my own way so that thy will may be done.

OM

right thinking

2010-12-14T07:24:00.007-05:00

I've been feeling lonely lately. You know what I'm talking about. I have 440 friends on facebook, yet I've been finding myself scanning through names in my phone and not seeing anyone that I feel like talking to. Oftentimes I call folks anyway, just because I know that keeping in touch with people is something that works for me. I know that it feels good to get calls, so I dial even if I don't particularly feel like it.

Funny, I've been spending lots of time getting ready for this trip where, I think I'll be spending the majority of my time alone. Certainly, I'm not expecting for my experience of India to transform all aspects of my life like some magic spell, but I really am ready for a shift to happen.

I've been enjoying school, I love being involved in recovery, I find myself more at ease than I've ever been - everything is moving along at a nice clip and in the right direction, really, just fine, but there's that last little bit my will and my life that I can't seen to turn over and I'm not even sure I know what that is.

I'm trusting the Universe. I'm putting one foot in front of the other and hoping that the answers will be revealed. So I call when I don't feel like it (I may still feel lonely, but I get to talk to people), and I may even begin to act my way into right thinking.

giving thanks

2010-11-28T12:12:00.006-05:00

A small group of my friends and I went upstate and descended on my dad's house again this year for Thanksgiving. The cast of characters consisted of my dad, four friends, three dogs, a fat old cat, and me. I'm grateful that I was able to get away for a few days, show up for my Pop, and offer a warm and friendly place to friends and extended family for the Holiday.

I did most of the cooking and most everything turned out pretty well (I did learn, however, that the rack in the oven shouldn't be put on the lowest level because the electric coil tends to burn the bottom of whatever your cooking/baking). The Brussels sprouts and fennel gratin could've been baked to a crispier finish, but overall, not bad.

One of the friends who was there had just relapsed a couple of days before we went up. While this is, of course, an unfortunate occurrence for him, it was a great opportunity for me because I was able to see very clearly how miserable, uncomfortable, agitated, irritable, and discontented he was. I had the ability to distance myself and consequently be enthusiastically grateful that it has been almost eight years since I've felt exactly that same way. Of all the things for me to be grateful for (and if I'm honest with myself, the list is pretty long), watching someone writhe in the unbearable agony of remorse and self-pity bathed me in a gratitude that I can't be reminded of enough. When I start to feel restless and irritable about common inconveniences, it is so important for me to remember that self imposed demoralization and self-hatred is only ever an arms length away.

Dear Gracious and Loving God
(of whom I have not even the most basic understanding),
Thank you for the the countless gifts I've been given, for reminding me how far I've been brought. Please, continue to hold me in the hollow of your hand and protect me with your Grace. Please Loving Spirit, help me maintain a healthy, daily spiritual condition, so that I might help protect myself in those times when I may not feel your presence.

Thank You, and Amen

ouch

2010-11-17T20:56:00.003-05:00

Apparently, as part of preparing for a trip to India, one should make sure that certain health precautions are taken. And while it is no longer legally necessary to receive inoculations in order to travel to certain parts of the world, some inoculations are strongly suggested. Today I got a tetanus shot, a whooping cough inoculation, and a pneumonia inoculation. I chose not to get the malaria tablets because 1) they're supposed to upset the tummy, 2) malaria is only found during the rainy season in the North of India (it's not the rainy season and I'll only be in the South), and 3) they're rather costly. The Japanese encephalitis inoculation costs a thousand dollars, so I opted out of that one too. There are antibodies of both hepatitis A and B in my blood (read immunity), so I didn't need those inoculations, but tomorrow I will be picking up typhoid tablets at the pharmacy as well as antibiotics to take with me in case I get sick.

Now, I usually don't mind needles, but the pneumonia shot actually hurt. It felt like a small inflatable ping pong ball was being forced underneath my skin, and right now my arm is aching. Oooowww.

anticipation

2010-10-29T08:45:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I purchased my airline tickets for my much anticipated trip to India. To get there I must fly for seventeen hours, with a three hour layover in London, and when I arrive in Chennai, it will be two days after I have left New York. Swami Saradananda will meet me when I land, and after a couple of days in Chennai, we will travel south by train to Pondicherry and Auroville. We will continue on to Kerala where, Swami tells me, we will use a beach house as our home base. From there we will most likely take several other trips to I don't know where.

I am excited. I am scared. I don't know what to expect and I am surrendering myself to whatever will be. I am remarkably blessed to be able to take this kind of trip with someone who has lived in India off and on for the last thirty years, and who I've known all my life. I know I am in good hands with her and with the universe, and that I will be taken care of.

2010-09-13T07:10:00.001-04:00

back to school

2010-09-09T17:33:00.006-04:00

I haven't been very active with the blog this summer. It's not been for any lack of interesting topics, I've just been enjoying some down-time before the next semester starts. Of course, I've considered posting my personal responses to the lunatic antics of the tea party candidates Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer and the reprehensible and racist SB-1070 bill that she signed into law, Katrina's five year anniversary, U.S. troops leaving Iraq, the lower Manhattan, Islamic Cultural Center of New York (aka the Ground Zero Mosque), or more recently, the crazy, wing-nut pastor in Florida who's planning a much hyped Quran burning. But I've resisted simply in the name of sloth.

Today I went to school and had my first meeting with an adviser concerning the coming semester. My schedule isn't going to be very heavy with classroom time this term, but it does look like I'm going to have to do a lot of self-motivated writing. I'll also be taking a documentary photography class, so in addition to going to photo exhibits around town and documenting my responses to them, I'm expected to take photographs. This Saturday, the ninth anniversary of 9-11, I'm going to take my camera and go see what kind of madness I can witness and digitally capture at the location of the proposed Islamic center (If I have success with my photo documentary endeavors, I might post some here).

In addition to the photography class, I'll also be taking Spanish (perhaps just a tad more useful than the German I took a number of years ago), and a three day residency on theater, HIV, and community health. The theater/HIV residency is being led by a woman who's gone to Africa and done theater pieces in an attempt to educate communities about HIV/AIDS.

It seems like it should be an interesting fall term, and as I get reacquainted with my writing voice, I'll hopefully be a little more active with my blog postings.

2010-08-27T09:56:00.001-04:00

change nothing - nothing changes

2010-07-28T12:42:00.012-04:00

I am blessed to be so situated that any number of people reach out to me for help almost daily. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be thought of as one whose experience and advice may be helpful.

Many studies have been done about happiness, and what it is exactly that makes people happy. What these various studies have uncovered, and I must concur, is that being useful far outranks property, prestige, hi-tech gadgetry, jewels, or stock portfolios as the source of true happiness. Everyone enjoys nice things and creature comforts and I am no different. I am aware, however, that my self-esteem is increased by doing estimable acts, and being useful makes me feel, well, useful. It also makes me happy. And while it remains a privilege to be reached out to (to feel useful and consequently happy), I also continue to be greatly frustrated by the fact that when I am asked for suggestions - suggestions are given - and then completely disregarded.

Oh, what fools these mortals be!

It's not always easy for me to remember that I never learned from anyone else's mistakes, or that I rarely followed the advice of others unless it was exactly what I wanted to hear at the moment. Nor, I should add, did I stop selfish and self-destructive behavior until I was utterly defeated by its consequences.

The unfortunate truth of being part of a community of recovering people is that there will always be an unavoidable body count. While certainly heart-breaking, these tragedies need to be learned from, and their experience must be shared if others are to benefit from them (otherwise these tragedies would be senseless, indeed). I hope that the fledglings who are in my path right now aren't added to that endless procession of unfortunates who have gone on before. But whether they are or not (and this may sound more cold-hearted than it really is), it is imperative for me to remember that it's better them than me. And if I have any ability at all to share a message of hope with them, I would like to be able to communicate what my experience has shown me - that surrender is essential, and that nothing changes if nothing changes.

remember the alamo

2010-07-05T15:10:00.030-04:00

This past weekend, close to sixty-thousand recovering alcoholics from around the world gathered in San Antonio, Texas for the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. There were meetings and workshops, dances and hospitality suites, a flag ceremony with flags from more than seventy nations, old-timers meetings, and events held in the Alamodome, a sixty-five-thousand seat multi-purpose facility that is primarily used as a football and basketball stadium.

While I feel that the word is overused, when tens of thousands of people rose as one, held hands, and recited the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference" it was truly awesome.

The air was electric. I looked around the stadium at the massive and diverse crowd of strangers holding hands, many silently weeping, and felt we were all joined by a common solution to an oftentimes fatal affliction. For me this emotional sentiment was echoed on the streets of San Antonio, as recovered alcoholics from all over the world had literally taken over the town. This convention was, supposedly, the largest that the city had ever hosted.

I heard some remarkable speakers share their experience, strength, and hope. I also heard a few truly inspiring stories of how tragedy had transformed people's lives, and set them on a path of spiritual enlightenment and an altruistic practice.

Yesterday was independence day, and I spent the day in rental cars, airports, airplanes, and taxicabs traveling from San Antonio to New York City.

San Antonio is a lovely, even charming, southern, Texas town. The San Antonio River winds its way through the center of town and the River Walk (Paseo del Río) is beautiful. The River Walk is a pedestrian walkway along the river, one story beneath street level. It is lined with restaurants, shops, beautifully designed plant-beds (where the indigenous bald cypress, often hundreds of years old, can reach ten stories high), and water features (falls, ponds, fountains, etc) all linked by a network of bridges.

I learned that after a disastrous flood in the 1920s, plans were developed to pave over the downtown bends in the river to prevent possible future floods. There were protests against the paving over idea, and in 1929 San Antonio native architect Robert Hugman submitted plans for the River walk. His plans included dams and floodgates to regulate flow. Support for Hugman's River Walk plan grew and in 1939 crucial funding for its construction finally came from the WPA. Its continued expansion, ability to withstand flooding, and its draw for tourism has made San Antonio's River walk one of the WPA's great successes.

What San Antonio is probably most famous for, however, is the Alamo. While not terribly impressive by magnitude (it's actually rather small), its historical and cultural significance made a considerable impact on me.

It is important for me to note my observation that mostly everyone I encountered, who was a San Antonio native, seemed to be Mexican, or of Mexican descent. There is, in fact, a decisively Mexican flavor to the town itself. That being so, the concentration on the history of the Alamo set me into a pattern of deep and puzzling thoughts. Here is a building, indeed a National landmark, that is held up as an iconic symbol of American freedom and patriotism. While initially built by Mexicans as a Catholic mission, a place of worship, it is primarily remembered for its function as a fort in The Battle of the Alamo, and its role as a stronghold in the United States' battle against Mexico.

While I am certainly not a expert on the Mexican - American War or the Texas Revolution, my understanding of the history of the Alamo is as follows: Abandoned as a mission, the compound was taken over by the Texan army. At the time, the land we know as Texas was still Mexico. The Mexican army launched an assault on the Alamo to reclaim it, and almost all the Texan troops were killed. More Texan troops were sent to reinforce and reclaim the Alamo, and further bloodshed ensued. In other words, the Alamo is an historic site of a bloody American, white-man, land-grab from our Mexican neighbors.

The Alamo remains a symbol of American freedom, even though, at the time of the infamous battle, America was still a nation that saw fit to enslave black men (and women, and children).

I am grateful that my recent race, class, and gender studies have encouraged me to look at things from multiple perspectives. But while others were nonchalantly enjoying vacation time and sightseeing, I found myself wrestling with my understanding of our violent past. I considered the complex relationship that modern, Mexican-Americans (particularly San Antonio residents) must have to this history. It sharply brought to my mind the recently put into place anti-immigration legislation in Arizona, and the vehement, anti-immigration fervor, parading as patriotism, that is quickly spreading throughout the country, specifically the Southwest region.

Just as African-Americans (both free and enslaved) have played an integral part in the development and identity of the United States, so too have Mexican-Americans contributed to the cultural fabric that makes up our collective American experience. Unfortunately, it seems we may be entering into a new era of Jim Crow laws, this time with a focus on Latin-Americans as the threatening and feared "other," forced to adhere to stern, discriminatory regulation.

My increasing awareness of this vitriolic and rapidly growing opposition to all things immigrant directly counters my experience of the friendly and welcoming Mexican-American, San Antonians that I encountered on my trip. It continues to be my experience that our (America's) continued stringent, often enforced, cultural division remains the antithesis of the principles expressed by those who gathered in San Antonio this past weekend. We are a fellowship of men and women who share our experience, strength, and hope so that others may find what has been so freely given to us. As members of a spiritual and altruistic movement, we are people from every race and every walk of life, whose practices have given us an opportunity to develop a relationship with a God of our own understanding, and granted us the capacity to help others by sharing its healing and loving message.

While reflecting on the history of the Alamo, and my personal responsibility to be an ambassador of kindness, I am reminded of the text of the AA program itself, which states that "love and tolerance is our code." I believe we could all benefit if it were the code of many more.

nuit d'ete

2010-06-29T06:31:00.010-04:00

Last night a deep red line hung low near the horizon. It was as if the heat of the earth had seared the edges of the sky. Heat and humidity had been building all day until dusk, when the sky was finally forced to open, and moisture rained down, but only for a few minutes.

Now is the time of year when I love New York most - the people who can leave town do, families of Europeans wander around midtown holding maps, staring up at buildings, wide-eyed like children. The temperature drops only slightly after the sun slips beneath the horizon, but the black, city streets continue to hold the heat through to the next morning.

Tomorrow I fly to San Antonio. I've never been to Texas. I'll be joining a huge gathering of people on a spiritual journey. I'm glad the event is being held somewhere that's hot.

family and food

2010-06-07T11:20:00.012-04:00

Rhubarb-orange meringue pie

I haven't written anything here since the wedding. One might think that a wedding would be ample enough opportunity for one family to display high emotions, curious behavior, and general drama, but the week directly following my sister's wedding in Georgia, a family reunion was held in North Carolina.

Now please do not misunderstand me, I love my family and I certainly enjoy seeing extended family members whom I don't get to see often. But when these events do take place I know it's best for me to be kept busy. I chose, as I often do, to situate myself in the kitchen and prepare food. Sometimes it was for six or eight people, but on the weekend of the reunion itself I was cooking for forty people. This may sound like a daunting task, but I actually enjoy it. It is an opportunity for me to keep busy, be creative, and perhaps even to be of service.

I was not the only one cooking the whole time. My aunt is a competent cook and whipped up some tasty eats, my mother is a gifted cookie-baker (something I rarely have patience for), and my cousin Allison, from Portland, Oregon, is terrifically skilled in the kitchen. One night before the whole clan arrived, my mother, my sisters, my aunt and her family (about ten of us in all), gathered for dinner. I roasted a turkey with a pomegranate glaze, made a dressing (stuffing) for the turkey with olive oil rosemary bread, dried apricots, pistachios, and mint (baked in a separate, buttered pan), giblet gravy, a sweet potato gratin (insanely delicious), and a rhubarb-orange meringue pie! Everyone was pleasantly sated.

For the days when there where about forty people I made a huge quantity of lemon chicken from the Silver Palate cookbook, which all disappeared, a lentil salad, a New York style cheesecake, two strawberry rhubarb pies, and the rhubarb-orange meringue pie was so good the first time that I repeated it. The second day of the reunion cousin Tony and I fried up catfish that uncle Steve had caught the previous week (which had already been cleaned and filleted), while uncle Steve was behind the house grilling about forty pounds of ribs. I made two onion-thyme tarts with wholewheat crusts, and there were also numerous salads, cookies, and desserts. My sister made an especially good pomegranate butter cake with walnuts (she and I share a love for cooking with pomegranate molasses), and Allison threw together a kick-ass pasta salad and a spectacular chocolate cake.

catfish

Perhaps the nicest thing about my stay in North Carolina, aside from several exceptionally successful gastronomic highlights, was the strengthening of my relationship with my aunt. My mother's sister and I have never had any particular difficulty between us, but we've never been especially close either. Somehow, through a series of misunderstandings, selfish alcoholic behavior, and hurt feelings, I wound up staying at my aunt's house with her family for a week instead of at my mother's house. A week can often be a long time to stay with even the closest of family members, but she and I managed to use this time as an opportunity to get to know each other better. This is, after all, a woman that I've known since I was born. I found her husband and her family to be thoughtful and welcoming. She and I shopped and cooked together, spoke of family history, both long gone as well as recent, talked about the imminent departure of her son, the newly graduated lieutenant in the marines, to Okinawa, commiserated about the various pains of the family disease of alcoholism, and basically kibitzed all week. It is remarkable for me to notice that what once might have been a difficult situation filled with resentment and hurt feelings was so easily turned into a positive experience. I continue to be amazed at the evidence of myself getting better.

dearly beloved...

2010-05-15T08:38:00.015-04:00

I am in Athens, Georgia. It is hot and humid, and there is a rumble of excitement as a handful of Northerners are scuttering about this charming southern town in their finery trying to find their way to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. My sister and her Long-time guy are getting married today. There is a relative amount of family drama going on, but mostly, everyone is gathered here to wish them both the best and show their support. There is also a lot of drinking going on, and eating, (not so much dancing), but mostly love, good cheer, and well wishing.

My sister has been through hell this past year. And her betrothed has been there right next to her the whole way. It can't have been easy. He is a good guy and, although she and I have had our differences in the past, this last year we've become closer than we've been since we were children.

Of course, I personally question why anyone would choose to publicly join in matrimony now, when so much recent attention has been brought to the fact that millions are legally forbidden to do so (ahem, like me). But today I'm setting my politics, my opinions, and my feelings aside, and showing up for my sister. I may not be celebrating their union in the same way that others are, but I'm showing up, suiting up (literally), and shutting up, and offering my support to them both in any way that I can.

May they be blessed with years of health and happiness.

sakura

2010-04-20T09:08:00.010-04:00

T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month as it mixes memory with desire. Indeed, it does do that. I also find it cruel because it is my birthday month. So while nature is busting forth with colorful new growth, I'm reminded of the passing of time.

For weeks I've been thinking about my old boyfriend Tom. He's been dead for almost twenty years. He left way too soon. And I was way too young to appreciate what I had with him or what we had together. I guess I thought I was young enough that I would have many more chances at relationships - why should I bother working through the bumps and inconveniences of a relationship while there was still so much more out there to discover?

It's hard to reconcile such youthful foolishness. I wish I could have done things differently, but of course, that's not possible. Tom is not forgotten; his spirit still lives on in my heart, and he knows how significant he was in the shaping of who I am today.

I realize this is all sounding very sentimental and maudlin, but hey, it's my birthday, and I'm feeling old! Just let me rattle on, I'm almost done.

What I'm trying to keep in mind (and usually failing at) is that ten years ago I remember feeling self-conscious and unattractive. Now I look at pictures of myself from that period and I think I was pretty hot. When I look at pictures of myself ten years from now I'll probably think I was looking pretty good now. If I could just remember to stay in the moment and be grateful for what I have, then all this concern for aging and lost time might not be so consuming of the time I do have.

Vanity and self-consciousness prevent me from enjoying who I am right now. Cherry blossoms bloom for a very short time. But if I'm worried about them falling - then I'm not really enjoying them, am I?

Happy birthday to me.

be a fence

2010-04-16T09:46:00.003-04:00

cheesecake

2010-04-08T09:07:00.009-04:00

I got this recipe from my father a number of years ago. I believe that the recipe originally said it was a Lindy's cheesecake (the once famous New York eatery) though I can't be sure. Regardless of its origins, this cake kicks ass! I made it this last Sunday for an Easter/Passover gathering, and again, it didn't disappoint. Far from it. It seems that every time I make it I forget one of the ingredients (this last time I accidentally left out the cream, other times I've forgotten to add the flour to the filling), but it doesn't seem to make any difference. It has a simple, almost butter cookie-like crust, but the real kicker here is the freshly grated lemon and orange zests. It gives the cake a surprising citrus-y, aromatic lightness that balances out its super creamy heaviness perfectly.

CRUST:
1 cup flour
1 stick butter (room temperature)
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg yolk

FILLING:
5 8oz. packages of cream cheese
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons flour
1 1/2 teaspoons @ grated lemon & orange zests
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup heavy cream
5 eggs
2 egg yolks

Combine flour, sugar, lemon zest, and vanilla. Make a hole in the center and add yolk and butter. Mix till the dough cleans the side of the bowl. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in wax paper and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 400.
Grease the bottom and sides of a 10" spring form with butter. Remove the sides of the pan.
Take a third of the dough and roll flat to fit the bottom of the pan. Trim the edge.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.
Divide the remainder of the dough in 3 or 4 parts and roll into strips about 2 1/2 or 3 inches wide.
Put the pan together and using your fingers, fit the wide strips of dough to the sides of the pan.
Use a sharp knife and trim the dough so it comes 3/4 the way up the sides of the pan. Refrigerate.

Raise oven to 500.

Mix cheese, sugar, flour, citrus zests, and vanilla. Beat to blend.
Beat in eggs and yolks one at a time, add cream. Continue mixing till well combined and then pour the cheese mixture into the pan.

Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for 1 hour.

j'aimais

2010-03-16T08:51:00.006-04:00

I loved all games and fairy tales
As strangely odd as that may seem
I loved firelight and witches' tales
You see, you were there in my dreams

You leaped buildings in single bounds
Although I well may ask you how
You bayed the moon just like a hound
I knew I adored you now

You laced the night with raging storms
You threw lightning 'cross the skies
You kissed my mouth with promises
You burned me with your lies

You loved me like a poet loves
My nights were made of stars and fears
Thinking that you would go away
And leave me with only my tears

I loved the towns where we made love
And the hotels where we played games
You thought I'd never live it down
Yet you see, I've forgotten your name

(Jaques Brel translated from french)

bit off more than I could chew

2010-02-11T10:12:00.021-05:00

School comes hand-in-hand with reading and writing, that’s a given. I’m taking a literature class in espionage and spy fiction so, of course, there’s going to be a considerable amount of reading there. I’m also taking a class where each week we screen a film and then we're expected to write a reaction paper, or analysis of that film for the next week’s class. The class is called Dark Dreams: Studying the Horror Film. It’s really fascinating and the professor is super-smart and has great taste in films, so I’m happy to do the work that’s expected for that class.

When registering, I had pretty much decided that I was going to be taking those two classes, and I knew that they were both likely to have a pretty heavy workload. I needed to choose a third class for the semester, and so I figured I should probably choose one that wasn't as likely to have so much work. I perused the catalog, and judging from the various class descriptions, I chose 'The Culture of Food' thinking that we would be talking about how different cultures eat, how certain “ethnic” foods became popular in American culture, etc. Well, we do talk about that stuff, but we are also expected to read an abundance of classic essays from different anthologies of anthropologist’s writings; Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, etc… And then we are expected to write a reaction paper to everything that we’ve read.

Now, I’m not saying that this stuff isn’t interesting - far from it. But it takes a couple of readings for me to fully understand these anthropologist's theories, and then I have to wrestle with writing about them.

This turns out not to be a cute-little-food-class-to-fill-in-your-schedule as I was expecting/hoping it would be. It is rather a full-on, hardcore anthropology course!

I know – It’s called school for a reason. What did I expect? I just wanted to give you guys an idea of what’s been going on with me and why I haven’t been more blog-active lately. Who knows, maybe further into the semester we’ll actually eat stuff. Right now I have to go write a paper about the introduction of sugar to the European continent and its significant consequence to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

spiritual toolbox

2010-01-17T08:52:00.013-05:00

This morning the Reverend Dr. James Forbes, senior pastor emeritus of Riverside Church, is speaking at Riverside to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. I've been considering going up to hear him since last night when I heard that he was going to be speaking. I've heard Forbes preach a number of times - he is a gifted orator; usually moving, and inspiring, however the politically-charged and divisive senior pastor scandal last year at Riverside, coupled with my recent personal experiences with churches and liturgy, have me leaning in the direction of not going. Recently I have witnessed much artifice but little substance; lots of talk - not so much walk.

While struggling with some personal issues, with Frankie's illness and death, and while wrestling with the responsibilities of being a health-care proxy, I've sought support in various places. Surprisingly the church was not very receptive to my needs. I do realize that I am responsible for my own experience of things and that all the things that don't work for me have one thing in common: me. Having been part of a church community, however, and having specifically asked for help, I am still somewhat surprised that I didn't receive more reaching out, more pastoral care. Perhaps I have been looking outside myself for some sort of spiritual panacea when I might have been concentrating on myself and how I could be growing spiritually.

Friends In Deed has been a good resource for grief counseling and self care, and I am blessed to have a small but consistent network of people who freely share their experience with me in a way that is firm, yet gentle and loving. I've had the opportunity to speak with some remarkable people these past few months; pastors, social workers, hospice workers - I have found that the people who choose to work with dying people and their families are astoundingly caring and helpful - one doesn't go into that line of work for money or prestige. They have reminded me that they will remain available to me when or if I choose to seek support though them.

Help is all around me if I take the time to seek it out. If I am quiet and look inside, I can sometimes listen to that Inner Voice that usually sets me on the path of Good Orderly Direction. I have a full set of spiritual tools, I just usually choose not to use them until I'm in pain. There is a saying that 'God is good all the time', and I have to believe that having come through this difficult patch without much outside help has allowed me to see my own strength, it has allowed me to acknowledge the value of growth through personal struggle. It's not like this is a new concept - apparently I just need to have things spelled out for me - repeatedly.

Na'vi

2010-01-14T11:35:00.004-05:00

Avatarize yourself

2010-01-13T15:23:00.016-05:00

Frankie Buschke

July 14, 1941 - January 13, 2010

My friend took her last breath earlier this afternoon. I'm not sure exactly what I am feeling, except that it was a privilege to know her and to be able to be of service to her during the last months of her life. She suffered terribly but managed to keep her love of life and sense of humor till the end. Frankie was a loving light that touched many lives. She was an inspiration to me, and I will miss her always.

acceptance

2010-01-09T17:19:00.002-05:00

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I could not be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes...

When I focus on what's good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what's bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on the problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases...

Perhaps the best thing of all for me to remember is that my serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations... I can watch my serenity level rise when I discard my expectations...

Acceptance is the key to my relationship with God today. I never just sit and do nothing while waiting for Him to tell me what to do. Rather, I do whatever is in front of me to be done, and I leave the results up to Him; however it turns out, that's God's will for me...

I must keep my magic magnifying mind on my acceptance and off my expectations, for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance.

from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
4th edition: Acceptance Was The Answer
3rd edition: Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict

spikes of lucidity

2009-12-31T16:59:00.013-05:00

It is the last day of 2009, there was a heavy snow storm this morning but it's powdery blanket has left the city almost as quickly as it came. I have seen Frankie everyday since Christmas. She continues to be made comfortable by medications and a caring staff, she also continues to deteriorate both physically and mentally. There are moments when it seems she has full mental capacity; she'll begin to say something or ask a question, but these moments of clarity are usually short, and just as quickly she'll trail off and recede into her metastases stupor.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours with her. We talked a little, I fed her some soup, I read to her a bit, but mostly she slept as I sat with her. When it was clear that she was sound asleep, I left and crossed the park back to the West Side.

At about seven o'clock my phone rang, it was Frankie.

"Hi Honey!" I said excitedly when I heard her voice.

"What's with you?" she said, "why do you sound like that?"

"I'm just happy to hear you sounding so good. How are you feeling?" I asked.

"Sounding good? I feel awful, I can't get comfortable." she said fully alert, " When are you coming over here?"

"I was just there for a few hours today," I said "We talked and I fed you some soup."

"You were?" she cut me off, "Oh God, this is awful, I don't remember a thing. What kind of soup?"

"Squash soup," I said "you really liked it, you ate it all."

"I did? Oh no, that soup's awful!" She responded "This is all so terrible. It's like I'm on a different planet."

And then just as quickly she left. The words became difficult and she couldn't get them out. The nurse took the phone from her and told me that she needed to sleep.

Early on, when I took on the responsibility of being Frankie's health care proxy, I was told that metastases with brain involvement is often much more difficult for the family and care-givers than it is for the patient. The patient can be kept comfortable as the disease progresses, but they often drift into dementia, or slip into unconsciousness and mental deterioration. It can become increasingly more difficult for loved ones who are left to watch this happen. It seems that this is exactly what is happening to Frankie.

Today I was there again and she was much like she was yesterday. Her head remained tilted to one side and her mouth hung slightly open. She drifted in and out of sleep, and the few times she attempted to speak it was difficult and clearly frustrating for her as she couldn't string together more than two or three words at a time. I fed her some apple sauce, moisturized her hands, head, and face, and did some hand-holding and talking. I brought a sandwich with me and ate it in the chair next to her bed. I talked to her about the snow storm this morning, asked if she needed anything, and tried to make her comfortable. I noticed that someone had left a copy of "As Bill Sees It" in her room, so I read a passage from it.

A man appeared in the doorway, his face crinkled in anger and discomfort, resting his weight on a cane, a small woman standing behind him. Frankie looked toward the door and with full force and clear, crisp diction said: "Oh my God, Is that my brother Herman?"

I left the room and sat outside in the anteroom with Herman's wife. Frankie has been estranged from her family for years. I don't know the specifics of their history, nor do I want to, but as adults they have not been part of each other's lives. Herman's wife asked me about Frankie's condition, her prognosis, etc. I gave her brief answers and we just sat as Frankie and Herman spoke in the other room. After a few minutes Herman began to walk back out through the doorway but stopped as Frankie said in a loud, clear voice, "I just want you to know that I love you."

Herman turned around and reentered the room and said to his sister, " I love you too."

The wife took my hand and with teary eyes said, "I'm so glad he was able to say that."

Herman walked back out of the room and said over his shoulder, "Be good"

Frankie responded loudly, "Not much chance of that"

"Well if you can't be good be careful"

This exchange was done in such a quick and steady tempo that it suggested to me this may have been something that they said regularly to each other years before.

Herman and his wife left. The visit couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes, but the arrogant and curmudgeonly man that had entered the room just minutes before left an altered man. The short time with his sister had clearly been healing and transformative. It illustrated to me the importance of closure, and reconciliation, and the power of forgiveness.

I went back in to see how Frankie was doing and she was completely spent. The exchange with her brother had taken all the energy she could muster. I leaned down and asked her if she was alright or if I could get her anything, and she couldn't form words, her mouth made odd shapes and she could produce only weak sounds. I took her hand and said, "That was something, wasn't it?" She squeezed my hand, looked up at me, and smiled. I went out to get her some apple juice to give her a few sips, but before I could tear the paper off the bendy straw I saw that she was sound asleep. I kissed her on the head and left.

xmas morn

2009-12-25T09:28:00.009-05:00

It's Christmas morning and for the first time in a long time I am not with my family. I woke up this morning with a dog on one side of me and a cat on the other side of me, (perhaps a personal joke from my Higher Power illustrating that I am not really alone) but no tree, no presents, no carols, no festive breakfast, and no drama. Admittedly I kind of miss all the holiday hoopla. The planning and arranging leading up to this day has always been wrought with drama, and even this year the build up has been difficult. But I'm staying home this year and doing what I need to do, I'm trying to hold steady to a personal idea of Christmas - an idea that what I bring to the table is more important than what I take from it - though the table may not even be where I thought it was.

My friend Frankie is in the last stages of cancer, and she was moved yesterday from an inpatient hospice facility at a hospital downtown to a smaller, longer-term hospice residence across town from me. I went to see her last night and she was pretty much incoherent. She has been heavily medicated for weeks now because of the extreme pain, but yesterday she was medicated even more than usual to make her transfer less traumatic. Frankie hasn't been able to get out of bed for a few weeks and she gets confused easily.

I tried talking with her a little but she was having difficulty understanding me. I gave her a few sips of apple juice, held her hand, and sat with her a while. The new facility is actually very nice. She's in a rather pretty and small private room on the sixteenth floor with a big window facing west - a big unobstructed patch of sky - perfect for viewing sunsets. I put a few things around the room so that she might feel more at home when she woke up. Then I walked down Third Avenue about ten blocks and took the 86th street bus home through the park. There were crowds of last minute shoppers juggling bags and running into stores. I feel like I'm missing out this year - like something's passing me by, but it's really OK.

I walked Zeke down by the river early this morning. The frigid wind whipped around us as we walked the narrow paths that have been shoveled through the now crusty and hardened snow. I will treat myself to a quiet Christmas breakfast and then make my way back across town to check on Frankie to see if she's comfortable and getting settled in.

I've felt more than a little disappointed these past few weeks - treading new territory, unsupported - the holiday spirit has completely evaded me; no family plans, no trips, no church home, no holiday parties, no special someone to shop for - self pity is a default setting for me in the best of times, when I'm in an emotionally challenging place, and especially during the holidays, these settings have a tendency to get rigidly set and magnified.

If I take a few steps back, breathe, and look at the bigger picture, I'm able to see that this year, rather than being invested in giving or getting the grooviest gifts, I'm putting some packages under a big invisible Christmas tree - a tree of good conscience and right action, a karma tree, or since Frankie's been a practicing Buddhist for years, a bodhi tree.

This morning I'm opening a gift of perspective. As I'm unwrapping it I can see more clearly what it is to be blessed. It is truly a gift to be able to show up for someone who needs me, and though this isn't the way I would have chosen to spend Christmas, I realize that there is a greater Power and a deeper reason for me to examine the vital Christmas message that it is better to give than to receive.

Peace on earth.

La Ciudad

2009-10-23T08:33:00.021-04:00

I have been so busy with school lately that I haven't been able to post anything for a while. Just to keep up I thought I'd share something that I wrote for my class: Race, Class, and Gender in American Film. The following paper is a response to screening La Ciudad, a 1997 film by director David Riker.

Loss, frustration, hope, and the promise of a new life in the land of opportunity are just some of the components of the stories that unfold in the four chapters of La Ciudad. Each chapter starts its journey from the central location of a photography shop that advertises visa applications and passport photos. Inside la photgrafia, false backdrops are put in place to help create the artifice that accompanies the smiles of these people who are ever-present but rarely seen. A montage of black and white portraits give us glimpses into the faces of Latin American immigrants longing for opportunity. These are faces worn away by poverty and suffering, yet filled with hope; these portraits provide a chance for us to see those who are otherwise invisible, and the photographs themselves are proof of their existence.

Riker’s searing depiction of Latin American Immigrant life is especially hard hitting. It is an unrelenting and often unpleasant, gut punch of reality to a nation founded by forefathers who fled their own homelands to create greater opportunity for future generations. The same manner of hardships and social injustices that were so difficult to overcome for the Irish, Italian, Eastern European, and Jewish immigrants of the last century, continue to impede Latin American immigrants today. It is ironic that Riker’s stories take place in New York City, the home of Ellis Island, historically the first major point of entry for immigrants, a city nicknamed ‘the melting pot’ to describe its densely populated immigrant neighborhoods, and a city that boasts and celebrates its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural diversity.

The quartet of challenging and heartbreaking stories in La Ciudad brings to the surface an abundance of critical issues. As the agonizing lives of these new Americans unfold with an increasing sense of urgency, each segment is strung together, and floats atop the curious choice of romantic woodwind, chamber music. The plaintive call of an oboe leads the viewer from one chapter to the next, and perhaps this choice of a melancholy wind ensemble is meant to echo the sustained motifs of being lost, faith, disassociation from family, and the concept of ‘home.' Where is home? What is home? The answers to these questions about home are never answered directly, but it is revealed that home may be a station wagon in an abandoned lot, a housing project, faraway places in cherished letters, or more consequential, but certainly less tangible; the love of a child and family.

I was very interested to read about the casting of non-actors in the film, the challenges that that involved, and the various improvisation exercises that were used to help create a trusting and safe environment for the players to express their inner emotional life; intimate and painful emotions that were expressed and captured so vividly in the film. Especially moving to me was the description of the improvisation exercise in the church where the women were crawling under tables and chairs, remembering what it was like crossing the border at night. During the exercise one woman pulled off her earrings and put them in her bra to protect herself from being robbed, the other women saw this gesture, remembered the same experience, and began to cry.

La Ciudad examines illegal immigration, health care, and education; all vital issues that always carry weight and urgency but, in the current political climate these issues are perhaps more relevant than ever. Just this past September, South Carolina House Representative Joe Wilson interrupted a Presidential address shouting, “You lie!” when the President mentioned Illegal immigrants not being covered in the current healthcare bill. Xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment is so high that this kind of unwarranted, ignorant eruption should hardly seem shocking. The white, patriarchal, capitalist ideal is being threatened and its protectors will vociferously object, no matter how inappropriate or sophomoric.

I lived in San Francisco for ten years and during that time I worked in a number of restaurants. From my experience working in the food service industry I saw that behind the scenes, or in ‘the back of the house’, a number of the people who contribute to the successful operation of a restaurant are undocumented workers. It being California, most of these workers were Mexican. At one of the restaurants, where I worked for a number of years, there were several young Mexican men who washed dishes, bussed tables, cleaned the restaurant after hours, and a few eventually worked their way to kitchen staff. They lived together in an apartment with several other young Mexican men, they worked as many shifts as they could, and they sent most of their money home to help support their families in Mexico. These men, boys really, were always pleasant, good spirited, friendly, helpful, and sometimes worked twelve or fourteen-hour shifts. I can only recount my own experience in the food industry where the undocumented workers that I worked with were being paid and fed regularly, I have no personal familiarity to relate anything of the experience of the migrant workers who maintain farms all over the nation, or of the day laborers that I would see waiting for work in front of the lumber yards in San Francisco’s Mission district, or of the unfair and exploitative conditions of the many other undocumented workers, like those shown in the film.

I am baffled and infuriated by claims that Mexicans are crossing the borders and taking American jobs. I do not believe that an American is losing their job because an undocumented Mexican is willing to work fourteen hours a day as a dishwasher, or sewing bridesmaid’s dresses in a sweatshop, or picking lettuce. No one is losing employment because immigrants are being used, however illegally, to continue to grease the wheels of capitalism. Behind these misleading claims that immigrants are corrupting the nation and the economy is a world of ignorance. Those who champion these opinions may perhaps not recognize that many of the components that contribute to their own entitled lives may very well have passed through immigrant hands; the bricks that hold up their walls, the vegetables on their dining room tables, the dishes they eat off of in restaurants, or the take-out dinners being delivered to their front doors.

These same imprudent voices call for building walls at the border. Building walls at the border will only force immigrants to find other ways to enter the country. Workers will go where there is work and no wall will prevent this from happening. The continued misdirected anger at illegal immigrants in the name of patriotism is pointless and misguided. Migrant workers are driven by need and as long as there is work they will be there. Building bridges rather than walls is what we should be concentrating on. The United States is a market place and immigrants will be coming here whether it is legally sanctioned or not. Rather than continue this futile fight to protect our borders from the perceived enemy of an immigrant workforce, our nation might consider creating programs that will permit immigrants to work in this country and return home to their own countries to support their families.

the ever after

2009-09-18T00:24:00.011-04:00

Every time I think to write something here I consider that my time might be better spent working on something for school - I have so much reading to do and papers to write. Why spend time writing something for the blog? No one reads this stuff anyway - then I inevitably lose focus and do something completely unrelated, like play scrabble on facebook or tool around some unmentionable website or other.

What comes to my mind when I do feel like sharing my thoughts here lately is transiency: the passing of time, aging, impermanence, change, death, and people who are no longer here. I know that this recurring theme puts me at risk of sounding like an octogenarian, a morose introspective one at that, but perhaps all of these recent celebrity deaths have something to do with it. Iconic figures from my childhood have been jumping off the edge of existence and into the mysterious dominion of the hereafter. This seems to have been the summer of celebrity casualties – Farrah, Michael, Senator Ted Kennedy, Bea Arthur - just this week we said goodbye to Patrick Swayze and Mary Travers. I’m flooded with remembrances and recollections.

This is morbid, I know, but sometimes I google people from my past and see what I can find. More than a few times I’ve discovered obituaries of people I didn’t know had joined the ranks of the ever after.

Recently I did a google image search and found a couple of pictures of my friend Noel Craig (see above). He was a Broadway actor and was featured in a few issues of After Dark magazine, an arts and theater magazine from the 70’s with a heavy gay leaning. Noel died in the spring of 2002, the same time that I relocated back to New York from California. I didn’t know that he had died and only found out when I tried repeatedly to contact him after my return. Noel was a mentor, a playmate, and a friend. He helped guide me, usually inappropriately, into my adult sexuality. We had a long history as running buddies and though he was just about crazy as they get, one of the many holes in my heart has his name on it.

groff

2009-08-25T21:46:00.034-04:00

I had another ghost sighting today. I had just finished a late lunch with a friend in the Chelsea Market and was looking around some of the food vendors when I noticed that the man buying vegetables next to me was someone I hadn’t seen in at least 20 years. Years, hair loss, and medications have rendered me relatively unrecognizable from what I was back then and, though it might be generous to call this a mixed blessing, today I was grateful for it. He had aged dramatically yet, I recognized him immediately. I was fairly stunned. The years had not been kind to him. I began thinking about time, mislaid years, and aging. Lost in my head, I tumbled around in a brackish muck of self-pity and remorse - I tried to find my way back out but couldn’t.

I didn’t mention any of this to my friend and just tried to shrug it off but the memories kept coming back. I was shocked at such disturbing, visual evidence of the passing of time. I continued to stare straight ahead and walk through it as though nothing had happened, unaffected.

My friend and I climbed up to the High Line and we walked. We chatted and we looked at the river. We looked at the passing boats and we talked about how we liked or didn't like certain new additions to the skyline. We noticed tourists and we stopped to take the occasional photo. I was still fighting the sour ball of melancholy that had lodged in my chest. The sun was hot and bright and we stopped under one of the overpasses while my friend took a few photos of some building or other. I turned and saw another familiar face - this one much more recent and kind of famous. I took two steps forward.

“You are fabulous” I gushed.

I actually couldn’t help myself, the gushing kept bubbling forth, unstoppable bilious froth.

“My name is _____. I just saw you in The Bacchae, and I also saw you in Hair last year. I think you are just fabulous”

“My name is Jonathan, Hello and thank you.” He took my hand in one hand and rested his other hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, I saw you in The Singing Forrest too!"

“Really?”

“I think you are just terrific, really. Congratulations on your success.”

He smiled, he may have said thank you again, I’m not sure.

“The world is your oyster and you should enjoy it.” Perhaps he thought I was a mad stalker; luckily he seemed sincerely moved.

It was only after the encounter ended that my friend, who witnessed the entire thing and needed to be told who he was, assured me that he did, in fact, seem genuinely touched. She then told me that New York Magazine’s Matrix had just trashed his performance as Dionysus in The Bacchae and that the show had just been horribly reviewed in today's New York Times.

This might have been a very difficult day for him. I’m not worried that it will last long for Mr. Groff - er - Jonathan rather (we are on a first name basis). This is a very talented kid with a huge rising star. This Friday Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock is opening and he is in it! The Bacchae is closing Saturday and by this time next week Jonathan's cute but awkward Dionysus and the accompanying bad reviews will be history.

If this was a difficult or lousy day for him perhaps my few moments of gushing brought some light in an otherwise dark afternoon. It certainly relieved me of the sour, disquieting feelings brought on by my earlier sighting. Sometimes not being able to edit might be a good thing.

august

2009-08-14T23:03:00.039-04:00

Summer in the city - I love it. While others complain of the oppressive heat and try to stay inside climate controlled spaces to avoid roasting I can’t help but think about the brittle, crackling cold that is only months away. I've been trying to spend as much time as I can outside. I slather my tattooed arm with sunscreen (sun exposure is the only thing that can damage tattoos) and I walk. I spend a lot of time walking around the city. I walk and I sweat, I stop to eat fruit and drink water and then I walk more. Different neighborhoods, parks, across town, by the river - I walk down blocks I think I’ve never been down before and all of a sudden I’ll see a familiar building or an intersection - visual triggers that trip specific recollections. In these past few warm weeks memories have been flooding my consciousness relentlessly. I’ve been visited by things, situations, times, and people that I haven’t thought about in years. It’s as if I’m caught inside a kaleidoscope of repressed experiences where colors and shapes flash by and let loose a cascade of forgotten moments and feelings: rolling waves, without space or reason, long absent sensations and emotions, rush and recede.

Sometimes it’s little things; an exchange with a stranger, the touch of a hand, the smell of popcorn or pizza fresh out of a wood burning oven, standing on line for a movie, I don’t remember whom I was with but I remember the movie, I remember the weather, I remember the time of day.

Names come rushing back - they wash over me: Hank,Tony, Todd, Karen, Nino, Bill, Barbara, Stephen, Sean. And, of course, countless faces I no longer have names for. What happened to them? Where are they now? Did they go on to have careers and families? Did they move away and create comfortable lives for themselves or did they make poor choices? Perhaps succumb to disease, addiction, or some other misfortune, as so many others, and pass away too soon?

The other day I passed a street corner and remembered seeing Tim Kramer on that corner. Tim Kramer was a tall, blond, sexy, sun-kissed, surfer-type, gay porn star of the 1980’s with a pouty, bad-boy smirk, mischievous eyes, and tousled, flaxen hair. He was one of the early casualties of the AIDS epidemic. I saw him on the street and we had lingering eye contact on that very spot where I was standing, maybe twenty-five years earlier.

I know that close friends who have passed on remain with me: their laughter, their touch, the knowing looks that friends give one another. I feel them, they somehow still remain; they're here.

What about strangers?

New York City is truly a melting pot year round but walking around the island of Manhattan in August, I’ve become especially aware of visitors from far reaches of the globe. Midtown in August - the pot simmers and bubbles to produce an especially concentrated, international reduction; just in the distance of one block one might hear Italian, Hebrew, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Korean. Sometimes I’ll hear a conversation in a language that I can’t identify and I’ll walk alongside till I can either identify the tongue or give up. The clacking of foreign tongues, their diverse cadence and inflection, car radios, sirens, games being played in the parks, all add to the rhythm of the city. In August, even the heated traffic sounds different. I walk in an escalating tempo and notice that I'm keeping time to the beat of the summer street.

I came back from visiting my sister the second week of July to learn that a kid I have been trying to help get sober for the last 9 or 10 months, I call him a kid but he’s 30 years old, had gone out on a two week cocaine binge. He suffered some sort of a psychotic break and in order to escape the imagined boogeymen coming after him, jumped, naked, out of his third story bathroom window. He suffered three broken vertebrae, two broken legs, and was all cut up, as he actually went through part of the window. He has had five surgeries, titanium rods put in his left leg, repeated surgery on his back, and was recently moved to a physical rehab where he’ll likely stay for the next few months.

Being witness to this kind of senseless, self-inflicted suffering stretches the mind in unexpected ways. Being able to show up for him and his family, to sit through the awkward hospital silences and uncomfortable feelings - to watch everyone involved struggle through the consequences of drugs, alcohol, and bad choices reminds me that I really am one of the lucky ones. How is it that I managed to escape a similar episode? Is there such a thing as fate or is life experience just the luck of the draw? What is the difference between chance and grace?

I know that I am not alone. I guess I've not yet done what I've been put here to do and so I keep walking. Those who have gone on before me and those who are still here, they walk with me; they benefit from, and are all a part of, that same thing which allows me to walk in this continued unmerited favor.

vacation

2009-07-26T10:48:00.001-04:00

The summer blog vacation continues...
Stay tuned.

spiritual windowshoppers

2009-07-18T10:04:00.003-04:00

These spiritual windowshoppers, who idly ask, How much
is that? Oh, I'm just

looking. They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping. But
these walk into a shop,

and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment, in
that shop. Where did you

go? Nowhere. What did you have to eat? Nothing much.
Even if you don't know what

you want, buy something to be part of the general exchange.
Start a huge, foolish projest,

like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference what
people think of you.

-RUMI

georgia

2009-07-02T17:24:00.011-04:00

I am spending the week in Georgia. It is the first week of July and the midday temperature here hangs at around 100 degrees. The air is thick and sweet and wet and the black roads reflect the intense heat like a searing griddle.

I'm here in Georgia because I'm visiting my younger sister. She is a Ph.D. student in literature at the University of Georgia and lives with her fiancée who is also a student at the university. She has lived here for four years and this is the first time I've come here to see her. We see each other during the holidays in New York and we've seen each other at other times and other places but this is the first time I've come to her home. Her home is lovely. Athens is a charming, comfortable, and friendly college town. I'm here now because just over a week ago my sister had a bi-lateral mastectomy. I'm here now because I want to be helpful. I'm here to cook and to clean and to wait on her if she needs me to. I'm here to do what I can even though I feel helpless. I'm here because I love her.

Yesterday my sister asked if I would like to see her scars. She was lying in bed propped up on pillows, she opened her special, zip-up-the-front "mastectomy bra" and showed me where they’d removed her breasts. Her fiancée was in the room and he turned away, not because he hasn't seen them or because they're hard to look at, he has bathed her and cared for her since her surgery, but because there was an awkward intimacy, a sharing of something that has been lost, an acknowledgment of the passing of youth, of innocence, an admittance that she, I, we, have all been changed.

Her scars are not mean or gruesome – not red or angry. She has two clean horizontal incisions, 8 or 10 inches long, across each side of her chest. She has no nipples; only the healing slash crossed with steri-strips at about half inch intervals, like tracks. She is not flat chested, as I was expecting. She’s planning on having breast reconstruction surgery and she already has small implants, called expanders, that were put in before she was closed up from the mastectomy. She was a D cup and now she is, maybe, an A cup. As I understand it, the plastic surgeon will slowly increase the amount of saline in the expanders at various intervals until they have reached the desired size. The stretching of the tissue and skin is supposed to be a painful process.

She asked me to take pictures of her scars. She said that looking at pictures of other women’s procedures had helped her so she'd like to be able to share pictures of her procedure with other women in the hopes that it may, in turn, help them.

There is no manual or guideline of appropriate response or behavior for this type of thing. No one is prepared for the physical, emotional, or spiritual challenges that accompany a life threatening diagnosis. Having had my own experience with a scary diagnosis I understand, to some extent, the personal trauma, fear, loss, the wondering if the illness will return, the helplessness, and the delicate balance one must maintain so as not to be seen as a victim. I don't, however, have any idea or understanding of what it must feel like to have parts removed, parts that relate directly to one's gender identity, self esteem, and sexuality.

If there is any good in all of this, and I have to believe that there is, it is that the cancer is gone, she is being cared for, and she is safe. What is, for me, perhaps the most significant outcome of this tragedy is that I have not felt this close to my sister since we were children. My sister and I have had a difficult relationship in recent years; we’ve disagreed, argued, and avoided each other. Through her recent ordeal; the diagnosis, the chemo and now the mastectomy, we've gotten closer and I’ve come to realize that I have a bond with her than I was, till now, unaware of. As siblings, we share something that no one else can.

I’m glad she’s going to be ok. I’m glad that I’m able to be here for her, however inadequate my help may be. I’m glad that I now realize how much I really do love my sister.

rain

2009-06-22T11:00:00.012-04:00

Francis Bacon- Second version of triptych 1944

New York City, June 2009 -

It has rained thirteen out of the last fourteen days. The weather has been cloying and humid, the streets have been dark, slick, reflective, and the people who have dared to endure the elements have been walking with heads down; quick, wet, irritable, and dejected.

The Metropolitan Museum is currently running a centenary exhibit of Francis Bacon. Last week I crossed the park twice to walk through the exhibit. It spoke to me so strongly that I was pulled back for a second visit just two drizzly days after the first. I slowly snaked my way through each gallery of twisted gnarled faces and bodies, shoes wet from my walk through the park I studied the affliction, sexual urgency, confinement, and grief expressed in Bacon’s triptychs and towering canvases.

Thursday evening I met with two dear friends and the three of us went to the New York Philharmonic to hear the second symphony of Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish composer. Composed in 1900, this popular work is thought to have been connected with Finland’s struggle for independence. It was written at the time of Russian sanctions on Finnish language and culture. Whether this was Sibelius’ intention or not is widely debated but the repeated motifs and the lush orchestrations churn and eddy to an emotional, gut-wrenching crescendo.

My inner emotional life is often greatly affected by my environment but now my external setting seems to be an extension of my internal condition. I have been grappling with some personal issues; my younger sister’s mastectomy and the family drama surrounding her pain and trauma, repeated alcoholic relapses of people I feel close to, as well as my own continued self-doubt and discontentedness.

Bacon’s twisted viscera and Sibelius’ whipped orchestrations lock-step with my inner condition and all this frustration and turmoil appears to have expressed itself as the heavens have been wringing out and washing over the city day after day after day. Not only a reflection of myself but also an extension of what I see happening across the globe in Iran, in the continued suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan, in rapidly rising unemployment and poverty here in the U.S., in a tumultuous national political climate, in escalating economic unrest, it rains and it rains.

More rain is expected today and though little has changed since I went to sleep last night right now the sun is shining. Clouds are quickly moving overhead but my perspective seems to have varied and even as my momentum can remain steady the trajectory of my destination can alter. I spoke with my sister earlier this morning and her spirits are lighter than would be expected - through it all I am reminded of my own powerlessness. Something greater than myself has allowed me to identify with the beauty in the torment of Bacon’s twisted vision, in the urgent discord of Sibelius’ strings. Something greater than me will care for the suffering across the globe and that same Great Something is allowing me to be present for those who need me.

Something has been lifted. Change is inevitable. All things pass.

domestic terrorism

2009-06-10T22:06:00.011-04:00

Earlier today, 88 year old James Von Brunn, an anti-Semite and white supremacist, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., less than one mile from the White House, and opened fire with a .22-caliber rifle killing security guard Stephen Tyrone Jones. Von Brunn was immediately shot by other guards on duty and he is now in critical condition with wounds to the head.

Von Brunn has had a long and well-documented history as a white supremacist and anti-Semite. As well as having his own despicable white supremacy website, he was arrested in 1981, and convicted in 1983, for attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board with a knife, revolver and sawed-off shotgun. He served six years in prison.

Today's reprehensible and politically motivated shooting takes place not even two weeks after the killing of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in his church in Wichita, Kansas. Threats of violence against abortion clinics have increased greatly since president Obama's inauguration this past January. The far-right, militant, pro-life tactics against abortion clinics, clinic workers, and their clients have escalated at a staggering rate and, still, local law enforcement officials continue not to treat these threats as serious. Every time any violence against clinic workers or abortion providers is carried out it represents a failure of law enforcement.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security released a report focusing on right-wing extremism. The report warned of exactly this type of terrorist act yet it was so heavily mocked and criticized by the far-right that Janet Nepolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, was made to apologize to veterans. The report singled out veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as susceptible to recruitment to far-right extremist groups.

People are being gunned down in churches and museums by politically motivated nut-jobs! Who are we worried about offending and why?

These recent acts of violence are terrorist acts. Plain and simple - there is no other word for it. Just because these unspeakable acts of violence have been carried out by good ol' boys who call themselves Christian doesn't make them any less terrorist than the Taliban. These depraved, immoral criminals believe they are involved in a Jihad for Jesus!

Imagine if Dr. Tiller's murderer or today's Holocaust museum shooter were named Mohamed or Akhmad rather than George or James. This country would be in a full-swing, code-red, lock-down tizzy. Network news reports of these recent murders aren't referring to these gunmen as terrorists, however, they're calling them pro-life activist and anti-Semite, respectively.

What more needs to happen before federal protection around women's health clinics becomes standard operating practice? What more needs to happen before the mainstream news media has the balls to call this burgeoning movement what it is?

lunatic fringe

2009-06-04T09:28:00.014-04:00

I'd like to write something reflective about the sprawling and colorful gardens in the park and how the city's turning green makes me feel renewed, or how the sound of the spring rain on my window lulls me into a peaceful sleep, but I'm far too agitated by things like doctors being gunned down in their churches, and their murderers being canonized by the ultra-right lunatic fringe to wax poetic about such niceties.

Aside from the Dr. Tiller atrocity I've been especially unsettled by a number of other things that have been happening in the news lately; former Vice-President Dick Cheney, a man who didn't speak much when he was in office, is continuing his torture talk tour. Now that Cheney is a non-office holding citizen he is speaking non-stop, while sitting atop a pile of lies, trying to revise history and convince the world that he was justified in his initiation and support of torture.

I also continue to be disheartened by the slow response of the Obama administration to tackle any of the LGBT issues that the President promised to address during his campaign when he admitted to being a "fierce supporter of gay rights". Also unsettling are the disgraceful discreditings by the usual suspect, suspects of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. These malicious and absurd accusations are beyond what anyone would consider educated or rational.

That the news media continues to take seriously the opinions of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich or even Dick Cheney, none of whom hold an elected office, is contemptible. Limbaugh is a hate-mongering entertainer, Gingrich; an angry-old-white man, puffed up like an irritated turkey, is trying to elbow his way to the top of a struggling party, and Cheney, aside from being a loathsome revisionist, is attempting to protect himself from being tried as a war criminal. Why the mainstream media continues to take these self-inflated windbags seriously is baffling.

There are, however, a few silver linings in all this cloud coverage. Yesterday, New Hampshire became the sixth state in the union to legalize same sex marriage, Judge Sotomayor's nomination as the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court is in itself a hopeful sign, and this morning, President Obama's speech addressing the Nation of Islam from Cairo University is a huge milestone in foreign relations for the United States. Although his speech this morning is an opportunity for his opponents and the familiar, blathering, bobble-heads to take offense (already there are charges of un-Americanism, weakness and accusations of his being too apologetic). In his speech, Obama called for a new beginning between the United States and Muslims and he encouraged Muslim nations to educate and respect women.

The world is a confusing place and continues moving at a dizzying pace. My response to national and global conditions is only heightened by the challenges in my personal life. Things don't always go as I think they should. That's probably a good thing. Without being challenged there is never growth, without struggle there is no progress. I do believe, however, that hypocrisy should have a light shown on it whenever possible. My immediate challenge is to keep the focus on myself, breathe and try to enjoy the blossoming flora that the season is offering me as a lovely distraction from these troubling difficulties.

inside solitude

2009-05-17T14:14:00.003-04:00

A human being is like the rod Moses held, or the words
Jesus said, the outer just

a piece of wood or mouth sounds from a country dialect.
But the inner can divide

the green ocean and make the dead sit up and smile. You
see far-off tents of an

encampment: you go closer. There's a dust shape, someone
walking. Closer. Inside

that, a man, bright eyes and strength of presence. When
Moses returns from the

wilderness where he goes alone, Sinai begins to dance!

-RUMI

25:40

2009-05-07T06:39:00.013-04:00

The teachings of all the major world religions can be melted down to having one inherent common thread; The Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Christianity punches this home especially hard with examples like Matthew 25 where Jesus says, "Just as you do to the least of these you do to me". This suggests, in the words of Jesus no less, that the most hated be shown forgiveness and mercy, even love. How then, with this model at its core, does the Christian faith continue to accept, indeed often encourage, the tradition of homophobia, marginalization and oppression of Christ’s gay and lesbian brothers and sisters?

The Reformed tradition is tied to the acceptance of an antiquated anti-gay credo that seems to be the antithesis of Christ’s teachings and though some clergy, bible scholars and educated church folk concur that the sentiment expressed in Mathew 25 is the correct way to lead a Christian life, there is a reluctance, even refusal, to speak to congregations about all this pesky gay business.

Why challenge people? Do we really need to talk about unpleasantries and risk things getting uncomfortable and ugly? It is in this attitude that false Christianity keeps its momentum. The Christ story is all about personal challenge and expanding one’s comfort levels. Is it possible to stand in the shadow of the cross and claim superiority to anyone? It seems to me that the most difficult thing about a Christian way of life is the requirement to love others even when others continue to be unlovable.

The ministry of Jesus was uncomfortable two thousand years ago and it is uncomfortable today but that discomfort doesn’t give us a free pass on doing the right thing. I am told to love my brothers and sisters – I don’t get to choose who they are!

From the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the evangelical mega-churches, from Joel Osteen to Rick Warren and all throughout the black church, with it’s rich tradition of fighting for social justice but where loathing someone based on sexual orientation is customary and where members of that community have, traditionally, had to choose between their gayness or their blackness, change is urgent.

The world is changing at great speed as evidenced by the rapid shift in local and regional legislature concerning same-sex marriage. In a world where so few demonstrate and celebrate fidelity shouldn’t the church be leading this movement?

busy day

2009-04-29T07:23:00.004-04:00

I haven't written anything here in a while mostly, I think, because I keep thinking I should have something to say about this ever-unfolding torture business. So much has already been said about it recently and it's probably pretty clear, to any of you who know me, where I stand on the issue. Also, I really don't believe I can offer anything new that hasn't been said better elsewhere. Today, however, things are happening at breakneck speed and I'm not sure I can pick just one thing to write about but I gotta write something.

It is President Obama's 100th day and finally, after much resistance from the Republican party, former Kansas Governor, Kathleen Sibelius, has been quickly sworn in as Health and Human Services Secretary in the midst of a pandemic of swine flu. The first US death from the swine flu, or the very recently re-named H1-N1 virus, has been reported this morning, a 23 month old toddler in Texas. Yesterday the usual suspects of the ultra-right media madness, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, started using the current health scare as an opportunity to spread racism and fear by bringing up that old war horse topic of illegal immigration. Immigration, illegal or otherwise, is not an issue in this current health crisis. Mexicans are no more responsible for the swine flu than gay people are responsible for AIDS or black people are responsible for crack. It's an argument that doesn't hold water but that doesn't stop the blubbering, bobble-heads from spewing their hateful rhetoric.

It's been nearly two weeks and I haven't written anything about the installation of New Yorks' new Archbishop, his Excellency, Timothy Dolan, a friendly fellow who vows to challenge any same sex marriage bills proposed in New York. Take that separation of church and state.

Yesterday there was the really big news that Arlen Specter, who after serving as Republican Senator from the great state of Pennsylvania for 29 years, has decided to switch his party affiliation. This is seemingly very good news for the Obama administration as Specter will make the 59th democratic seat in the senate and when Al Frankin is, one day, finally, seated as the junior Democratic senator from Minnesota, that will give the Dems a 60 seat filibuster proof majority. Good news right? Perhaps. Specter is, however, a true Republican moderate. He claims he's changing his party affiliation because the Republicans have moved too far right (good for him) and his moderate principles and his beliefs fall more under the heading of Democrat now that the Republican party is a dwindling assortment of floundering wing nuts and extremists.

After taking a closer look at Specter's voting record, however, one has to consider that this may not be such a great move for liberal lefties, like myself. Specter supported the Supreme Court Justice nomination of Clarence Thomas and has a long record of voting straight-up, old-school Republican. The real notable difference, especially as far as the regional, reactionary, gun-totting, party of "NO" is concerned, is his support of a woman's choice, admittedly a hot button, divisive issue for the Republicans who insist on shouting "Baby Killer" in the direction of anyone who supports a woman's choice.

So Specter's switch is good news in theory but it certainly doesn't insure filibuster proof voting on the Senate floor. Senator Specter is an honorable, responsible man of integrity who, I believe, does have the best interests of his constituents at heart. That being said, I believe that he will support Obama's health care initiatives just as he supported his stimulus package.

It is disappointing and disconcerting that the Republicans, who had an opportunity to nurture and support the likes of Senator Specter and encourage more like him to join their ranks, chose instead to deride him for his values, his integrity and his independent thinking. The GOP could be expanding their base by welcoming moderates instead of pushing them aside. I believe that the United States is a country that, ultimately, benefits from a two party system. What is going to happen when one of those two parties has so marginalized itself that it is no longer representative of those it, supposedly, serves?

tea party

2009-04-17T08:26:00.012-04:00

It's one thing to have right-wing nut jobs loudly objecting to anything that makes sense. This is America and they are, after all, constitutionally entitled to shout any crazy thing they like from rooftops, provided it doesn't incite violence. So I'm pretty much used to that and I'm not so much worried about the Tea Party fanatics who think that Obama's stimulus budget and tax plan will be their undoing. Looking at these protesters, however, it is my guess that the majority of them will actually benefit from the new tax plan as they don't appear, to me, to be folks who make more than $250,000 a year.

So they are wrong - so what? So they're carrying around offensive signs that liken Obama to Hitler and are calling him a Muslim (as if being a Muslim in itself is completely and utterly evil) and a baby killer and a traitor and some are even calling for his death, not impeachment, mind you, but death. This is all pretty disturbing stuff especially as this Tea-bagging business was not a grassroots movement at all, as Fox news claims it to be, but a planned protest initiated and orchestrated by Newt Gingrich, Dick Army and Fox news itself.

On some level it is amusing to watch the arrogant Grand Old Party unravel frenziedly, but my amusement is overshadowed by the underhanded, manipulative tactics that they are using and the hatred that they're inciting. What I find particularly scary is not that there are misinformed, misguided, angry regular folks shouting hatred out in the streets but that Governor Perry of Texas is publicly mentioning secession! That Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama says that he has a list of seventeen socialists who are members of congress! That Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota says that President Obama wants re-education camps for the youth of America!

These people are elected officials! Have they never heard of McCarthyism? Do they not see the similarities here? They are supposed to be working in the best interest of their constituents yet they are talking like uneducated, uninformed, lunatic fringe, bat-shit crazy wingnuts!

When did right-wing extremism become mainstream? Is what we're hearing from these people the desperate voice of the legacy of white supremacy losing it's grip on United States politics as it frantically tries to hold on and simultaneously circles the drain? Is this why there is such an urgent attempt to incite fear and anger however it can be mustered?

Shouts of un-Americanism from people who support secession is laughable but those shouting don't seem to see the irony. No one let them in on the joke that re-instating a confederacy is un-American. Perhaps they are just too focused on what the implications of a confederacy would have to a country that has elected a man of color to the nation's highest office.

status update

2009-04-09T08:39:00.004-04:00

Is making donuts... Has spring fever... Wrestles with the grumpy bunny... Eats too much breakfast sausage... Smells like strawberries...

Every morning I wake up, log on and wonder what I should say about myself, in the third person, for the rest of the world to read. I have found myself spending, wasting really, way too much time fretting over this particular puzzlement.

Is this, perhaps, a sign that I'm just not authentically part of this new social networking generation? Do those younger, hipper, twittering cool kids agonize over their status the way I do? Am I just trying too hard?

I could always clear my previous update and leave it blank but that seems so... blank.

Clearly, there is no immediate resolution to my status pickle so I'll just have to go back to scanning song lyrics and famous quotes till I find something just right.

european tour

2009-04-04T08:42:00.009-04:00

Presidents Obama and Sarkozy in Strasbourg, France April 3, 2009

For most of the twentieth century the United States assumed the role as leader of the civilized world; the best in industry, finance and policy. Other nations might look to us an example of what is good and right. A Beacon - America the best, the bravest, the boldest, the boss.

In more recent years, specifically following the attacks of September 11, when other nations saw an opportunity to embrace us as an ally with a common goal, it seems our nation moved from being an example of leading to dictating how others must fall in step with our agenda. That moment of opportunity had vanished and anti-American sentiment began to develop throughout the world, particularly in Europe, where the United States was once held in high regard.

A “war on terror” was waged, troops were deployed, soldiers were killed, countless Iraqi lives destroyed and fear and anger turned to suspicion as the United States, the example of what is good and right, broke its’ own constitution and began holding people without charging them and torturing prisoners in Guantanamo and other undisclosed locations around the world. Times had changed and who could blame others for pointing out the arrogance and hypocrisy of the great American nation?

That suspicion and anger began to fester here at home, in cities and towns, across the Great Plains and from sea to shining sea till this last November when America voted for change. (Obama’s decision to put players who helped to create financial deregulation in a position to fix the economic crisis isn’t, exactly, the change I can believe in but that’s another post)

The previous administration has left power, the Bush-Cheney justice department is being scooped out like a melon and discoveries of their dishonest, corrupt and nefarious deeds keep unfolding.

Now our nation is being represented to the world by a new face of America, one that other nations may not have seen before. After attending the G-20 summit in London, President and Mrs. Obama continued their European tour and yesterday President Obama held a town-hall style meeting in Strasbourg France.

In his opening remarks in Strasbourg he said, “America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive… But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious…So I've come to Europe this week to renew our partnership, one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies.”

It’s like I’m dreaming. I watched the presidents' opening remarks last night, staggered, my mouth agape. We now have a president who seeks to listen and to learn, a president who sees humility as a strength. Hail to the chief.

the haunting

2009-03-22T09:42:00.009-04:00

I don't remember when I joined Facebook but since that time I've been being visited by ghosts. People I went to high school with, old friends, lovers, cohorts, work associates, acquaintances and even people I don't think I ever really liked when we were traveling in the same circles some twenty-odd years ago.

I currently have 277 friends and 50 pending friend requests and numerous friend suggestions. And this is after editing them down to only people I actually know. Several times!

277 friends? Really?

When something happens and I feel like I need to talk to someone there are about three or four people I think to call. When I'm lonely or bored or think it'd be a good day to go to a movie there are about three or four people I think to call.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word friend as one being attached to another by affection or a favored companion.

Ok, so maybe we've become a little lax with our modern use of this word friend. I don't believe there's anyone I've accepted as a friend on facebook with whom I feel hostility. That's something right?

I don't want to be rude and I certainly have no interest in hurting anyone's feelings by ignoring their friend request but just because I remember someone doesn't mean that we're friends.

Almost daily, more ancient spectres appear before me as I sit in front of my computer monitor, mouth agape, not sure what to think or do.

More perplexing still is how to properly respond to the messages I've received from some of these long past friends. Again, it really doesn't serve me to be rude or hurtful or even dismissive to anybody but how, exactly, am I supposed respond to "What have you been up to all these years?" when my acquaintance with the person asking was so many years ago and peripheral at best?

It seems the rapid advancement of technological social networking has far excelled the speed with which the human psyche has advanced. Is there a standard, appropriate, contemporary response to such requests?

I usually end up writing something like:

"Wow. Thanks for saying hi. So good to see you on here. Things are really great. Thanks for the friend request. Later"

More evidence that being completely honest without hurting people's feelings in a modern world can be a very problematic undertaking.

michelle

2009-03-18T18:00:00.022-04:00

Remember last year when the consensus seemed to be that Candidate Obama's wife Michelle would surely mean his demise? There was all that business of her never having been proud of her country and being a terrorist fist-jabber and then she was awarded the ultimate, inexcusable title of angry black woman. Oooh, scary.

Over the course of the last several months, specifically since her husbands' installation as leader of the free world, that scary, angry black woman has fast become America's sweetheart. Mrs. Obama is proving to be a new brand of First Lady.

I don't mean to imply that the accomplishments of previous First Ladies should appear petty or insignificant. Elenor Roosevelt transformed the role of First Lady and fought for the rights of underprivileged people of all races and all nations. Hillary Clinton certainly brought intelligence and competence as she tried to take on the national health care system with assurance and command, a refreshing respite after Barbara Bush's authoritarian, grandmotherly gaze from atop her three-tiered, pearl collar. Rosalind Carter, a charming southern woman, took a strong interest to promote programs to aid mental health and the elderly as well as championing the performing arts. Betty Ford did terrific things during her tenure as First Lady to promote awareness of breast cancer and substance abuse issues and even Laura Bush showed kindness, generosity and compassion, working to end literacy during the time her husband's administration was gutting our judicial system. Many previous First Ladies have accomplished great things in their chosen areas of charity and in the agendas they've championed.

Filling such an iconic role as the first black First Lady is no small feat but Michelle Obama seems to be pulling it off effortlessly. Her journey from the south side of Chicago to Princeton, Harvard Law School then into the role of lawyer, mom to two beautiful daughters, Sasha and Malia, while being a devoted daughter and loving wife seems almost super human. Add to all this the significance of the fact that she is a descendant of American slaves and she is living in the White House! Is it any wonder that this woman is on, seemingly, every magazine cover?

Voices from the GOP continue to bad mouth and trash the Obamas. Rush Limbaugh, with three divorces and a well documented prescription drug addiction history, continues to throw ugly verbal stones at the Obamas while they, seemingly unaffected by these accusations, appear to live in idyllic Eisenhower-esque married bliss.

Have we ever had a First Lady from an urban, middle class, blue-collar background? I don't know. We've certainly never seen a woman bring this level of education to the role of First Lady. Sure, Hillary was an educated woman with a law degree but her lack of softness and the almost twenty year age difference between them creates the contrast of one who is a feminist lioness and one who shrugs it off.

If carrying off the improbable roles of educated, modern woman, super-mom, devoted daughter, loving wife and American icon simultaneously wasn't enough, a couple of weeks ago Mrs. Obama served food to homeless people at a soup kitchen in Washington DC. Of course this was arranged as a press opportunity but Mrs. Obama possesses a certain amount of sincerity and down-to-earth-iness that simply cannot be manufactured. She wasn't only feeding homeless people because some public relations guy thought it would be a good idea she wanted to be there.

Just last week our First Lady left the capitol for Fort Bragg, North Carolina to commence her agenda of reaching out to military families. The news footage of her greeting these military families tugged on my heartstrings particularly hard and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because of just how genuine and approachable she seemed as she was shaking hands and embracing these military men and women and their spouses. Maybe it's the still, surprisingly emotional punch the image of an African American First Lady has. Maybe it's just the simple authenticity and freedom from hypocrisy that emanates from her smiling face after these previous eight years of questionable, even nefarious government conduct.

Mrs. Obama seems to be striking a chord with her focus on the needs of military families. In her first television interview since her husband took office Mrs. Obama told ABC news, after hearing about military families on food stamps:

"It hurts. It hurts. These are people who are willing to send their loved ones off to, perhaps, give their lives _ the ultimate sacrifice. But yet, they're living back at home on food stamps. It's not right, and it's not where we should be as a nation."

"I encourage everyone out there, within the sound of my voice, to reach out on your own _ through schools, PTA, Little Leagues, churches, workplaces _ and find out if there's a soldier or a soldier's family right there in the community who needs a little extra support," Mrs. Obama said in her speech to community leaders in nearby Fayetteville. "They're there. Something as simple as offering help with car pool duty can make the world of difference to a parent who's trying to hold the family together during a very stressful time."

"Our soldiers and their families have done their duty _ and they do it without complaint," Mrs. Obama said. "And we as a grateful nation must do ours _ do everything in our power to honor them by supporting them."

Topping off the news coverage of her Fort Bragg visit Michele Obama was shown reading "The Cat In The Hat" to children ages 3 to 5, at a Fort Bragg child development center. Seated on the floor she said "I used to read this book to my daughters" a small boy ran up to her, hugged her around her neck and said,

"I know Sasha!"

"You know Sasha?" she replied.

And the two continued to hug as the other children sidled their way in for hugs of their own.

Mrs. Obama's iconic persona seems to have become a conduit for the message of this new era. This message is not just ringing true for military families or women or black people or even Americans (think back to the crowds gathered for then Candidate Obama's speech in Berlin or the celebrations in Kenya on election night). This administration's promise of authenticity, encouragement and inclusion, this message of hope, is being felt by everyone - even children.

give it up

2009-03-09T21:09:00.007-04:00

Lent is the period in the liturgical year of Christendom, the forty days that lead from Ash Wednesday to Easter, that represent the time that, according to the Bible, Jesus spent in the desert enduring the temptation of Satan before he began his ministry.

Traditionally, Christians have used the forty days of Lent to prepare for Easter through fasting, both from foods and activities, and by other acts of penance, as a time to grow in their awareness of what it means to be a disciple of Christ and to be on a spiritual journey. It is not uncommon for some people to give up a vice or add something that might bring them closer to God. This is often done by giving time or money to a charitable organization.

Having explained all this, I have been trying to figure out what I might give up for lent. What could I remove from my daily life that would be a penance to remind me of my faith during this season? This season leading up to Easter; spring, a time of renewal and new life. "I've got it" I thought, "Fried food! That's it! I'll give up all fried foods". The truth is I've already, pretty much, given up all fried food and being more stringent about this dietary practice might only lead to more weight loss, more physical pride and more vanity which wouldn't be a very spiritual reminder of my faith at all.

So I've been seriously thinking about what to give up that would strengthen the awareness of my faith as I consciously abstain from it and the thought came to me that I might give up using the words hate and should. I find both of these words to be negative, accusatory and overused words that tend to be corrosive and hurtful.

The word hate is so overused that it really seems to have lost it's meaning. How many times a day does one hear "I hate when that happens" or "I hate when people do that"? If a word, which is meant to express the most intense dislike, is constantly used to describe inconveniences and bothersome situations then, in my view, it really ought to be given a rest. I also find it rather unattractive to be bringing attention to people, places or things which I dislike intensely so for these reasons I've decided to try to eliminate the word hate from my vocabulary. This has proved really not as hard as I imagined and only became difficult recently when Ann Coulter was being discussed. Spewing and inciting hate is, after all, what she seems to have made a career of.

The word should, however, is a little more difficult to avoid. It's so much a part of our daily vocabulary: "You should try this", "You should go this way instead of that way", "You should stop smoking", "You should eat more vegetables." All these things may be true but It has been brought to my attention that when I use the word should I am automatically making the other person wrong. "I know better. My suggestion is more valid. What you're doing is bad." If I'm using the word should then I'm judging and insinuating that the other person is wrong even if I am trying to be helpful. Unsolicited advice is always heard as criticism. No one likes to be judged or told they are wrong. This makes people feel bad. So for this reason I've decided to try to eliminate the word should. So far so good.

This motivation of not wanting to make anyone feel bad brings me to the biggest decision I've made about what I want to try to give up: Speaking ill of anybody. Yep, you read that right. I don't want to say anything bad about anybody. This is the big leagues now. This is way more difficult than no meat on Fridays or not using specific words. Not speaking badly about anyone is proving to be very hard, indeed. Inevitably I find myself in situations that upset me. The challenge is to keep the focus on myself and my feelings instead of focusing on other people's choices and behaviors or what they are doing wrong. This is harder than it sounds. I can be upset with a situation and even express my feelings of displeasure about that. That is very different, however, than saying "That guy is a moron!"

Perhaps this idea of not speaking badly about others was brought on by the whole gossip thing. I don't know. I am going to try to keep this up, at least, till Easter. Who knows? It might even follow me into the next season and the next. Not making others feel bad is certainly a commendable step on a spiritual journey and could only lead to feeling better about myself. Even if I fail at eliminating this last indulgence I'll have cause to remember that I wanted to have it removed as an affirmation of my faith.

gossip

2009-02-28T22:20:00.015-05:00

What makes gossip so tantalizing? Why is it that talking about someone else's business to a third party makes someone feel better about themselves?

I know something you don't know therefor I'm more important because I have privileged information.
Poor So-and-so, we're so much better off than them.
Did you hear what happened to whats-her-name? What a shame.

Recently a lady, who I know just marginally from walking Zeke in the park, came up to me and asked me how my sister was doing. Last month my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and she's now currently undergoing chemo treatment. I've spoken to only a few people about this. I feel like this is a personal and delicate matter that I'm not quite sure I've processed myself yet let alone feel comfortable discussing with peripheral dog-park people. I felt violated.

I said "Excuse me?" She said "Oh, I just heard about her and wondered how she was doing." She scurried away. I must've shot her a threatening look, she has avoided me since and the subject hasn't been brought up again.

This morning another one of the dog-park ladies tried talking to me about yet another dog-park lady. She asked if I'd heard something about her and began trying to pull me into a conversation by making fun of the other lady, setting me up to take verbal jabs at her. I identified the impulse to engage but almost immediately got angry at her for encouraging this behavior as well as at myself for being susceptible to it.

Is feeling better about oneself at another's expense an inherent human trait or is it learned behavior? Does everyone naturally fall into this trap or is it a character flaw engaged in by only the morally weak?

I don't like the way it makes me feel. Being someone who talks about other people's business is not the kind of person I want to be. Having just recently been on the other side of this I'm more convinced now than ever how hurtful it can be.

Should I confront these park gossips about their nefarious chatter or just try to be an example by avoiding their indulgent clucking?

Gossip! I don't want to do it and I don't want to hear it. I realize I might show more compassion as these ladies may only be talking about other people's business because of a lack of substance in their own lives. Still, I find myself annoyed and offended.

Every morning Zeke and I walk briskly around the park as the same cluster of neighborhood ladies stand in the same spot and jibber the same jabber. Their dogs run around them as Zeke and I circle; down the stairs, along the river, up the path, around the playground, up the stairs, down the path. Two or three times we do this and the ladies gab and cluck.

I'll not be drawn in. I'll not be affected. I'm there to walk not talk. If I can make just a small difference by not even listening to it then I've done something good.

arbolé, arbolé,

2009-02-20T18:34:00.005-05:00

Tree, tree
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.
The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light,
a young man passed by, wearing
roses and myrtle of the moon.
"Come to Granada, muchacha."
And the girl won't listen to him.
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives
with the grey arm of the wind
wrapped around her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.

~ Federico Garcia Lorca

sexual healing

2009-02-08T23:42:00.014-05:00

Today at church, after the regular worship service, I attended a group discussion on faith and sexuality. Some of the questions offered for consideration were: How does one have a faithful sexual experience? What does it mean to be a sexually active Christian? If my sexuality is God given, how can I express it in a way that is healthy and worshipful and in a way that I believe would be aligned with God's will?

These are great questions and it was a decidedly interesting discussion. I feel very fortunate to have found a church community that would host such discussions when most religious institutions would certainly not encourage the topic of healthy sexual expression in a Sunday afternoon group.

There were married people and single people, straight people, gay people, lay-people and clergy.

I 'd like to further explore this idea of a sacred expression of one's sexuality. I think it's something that too few people give much thought to. The further we got into the discussion, however, the more I became aware of the fact that I don't have a healthy sexual outlet. I don't even know how to date someone let alone have a partner that I could feel safe enough to reach some kind of worshipful experience with.

Now, this is not a new topic for me. If you've read this blog you'll have noticed several older posts about my frustration on this very subject. Today, however, my frustration burrowed it's way to an even deeper and sadder place in my consciousness. Being in a room of young, attractive, articulate church folk I felt somehow, older, dirtier, more used up, as if I had less of a chance of what we were talking about than the others in the room.

Downward spiraling thoughts came steady and fast: "These people don't know about my past, my poor choices, my health status, they're so young and clean and full of promise, I have nothing in common with these people, they don't understand me, I'm so different, I have no business being here..."

I realize that these thoughts and feelings are the darker, flip-side of self-centered grandiosity but, still, my mind easily snaps into self-sabotaging behavior when I begin to feel vulnerable. My emotional experience, real or imagined, often becomes my reality. I fell back into a familiar, disconsolate and lonely place. Not just lonely. Loneliness is one thing but a loneliness accompanied by a sexual urgency. It's an all-too-familiar feeling that can become paramount to all other interests, driving, overwhelming. How can one hope for a healthy, spiritual, sexual life if driven by self pity and sexual urgency?

I somehow managed to pull myself out of the mental quicksand I was sinking into before I got caught too deep. Luckily, I've been spending a lot of time lately dealing with other people's problems and that's great as it keeps me from diving headfirst into my own pool of romantic obsession and sexual self pity. But I can't be busy with other people's business all the time so I've been asking for strength and guidance, patience and kindness and a reprieve from my difficulties so that I might be useful to others. I don't necessarily get what I want but, like it or not, I know I always get what I need.

benediction

2009-01-20T19:33:00.008-05:00

Earlier today, shortly after an historic and emotional transfer of presidential power, Reverend Joseph Lowery, the 87 year old civil rights stalwart and co-founder, alongside Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, gave the benediction prayer at President Barack Obama's inauguration.

Below is the transcript of Reverend Lowery's benediction:

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.

Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.

We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.

We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.

He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.

Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.

And while we have sown the seeds of greed — the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.

We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.

With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

invocation

2009-01-19T22:57:00.008-05:00

Bishop Gene Robinson's Invocation

Opening Inaugural Event

Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC January 18, 2009

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic "answers" we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

dormant

2009-01-11T12:12:00.016-05:00

It's the second week of January and already it's been a long, cold winter. In the mornings Zeke and I walk down through Riverside park where the palette is steel, slate, frost and ash. We walk along the water, the New Jersey side of the riverbank extends beneath and beyond the George Washington bridge, up the Hudson and out of sight. The sailboats are gone, the wind is cutting, Zeke runs like a puppy and my fingers tingle with cold through my gloves. The white sky and colorless ground feel symptomatic of my emotional state; on hold, waiting, brittle.

Row upon row of leafless trees reach crackled brown branches up like gnarled, ancient, hands. Reaching up, always up; motivated by the desire for something unattainable, knotted, aching, cold. Exposed and empty for all to see.

I'm waiting too. Anxious, aching, empty, cold.

In the meantime I try to take the next right action, do the next right thing. I know that self-esteem is increased by doing esteem-able acts so I pray to be good, to be helpful, to be kind. Often I become impatient and irritable and am forced to return to willingness only after the familiarity of discomfort reminds me that self-righteousness and self-pity are a corrosive thread that sour all they touch.

I get tricked into believing that a material thing will bring me relief; food, sex, an article of clothing, something. Always I am wrong. There is no material solution to a spiritual problem.

Still, I submit to the idea that something outside of myself will make me feel better and I engage in familiar, old behavior. Compromised, vulnerable, I try to invite God to be present. God is present. I ignore Him.

"If you see me on the street with someone don't say hello. I have a boyfriend."

How is it I'm here again? Can I actually be hearing this again? After all the years, the lessons learned, how is it I am still here, at this place? Perhaps I only thought I had humbled myself. The lessons of the past had not taught me enough honesty, enough humility.

I'd been told that humility will bring strength out of weakness, that pain will be the price of admission to a new life and that as I cross the threshold of this new life I will begin to fear pain less.

Like the trees, my activity is suspended, temporarily in abeyance. Fatigued by the weight of what's not there I'm exposed and brittle. I carry with me an empty space and though blessed with the fellow travelers I have on this journey I feel alone in a wintry landscape. Fragile, misunderstood, I thirst for the first signs of spring. The return of birds, sailboats on the water, a crocus and most eagerly, a relaxed knowledge that something will blossom, color will return and I will finally thaw.