Posts: 12

1. The Gray Zone: The No Man's Land of Relationships

   19.Apr.08, 09:17 EDT
   
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   I'm close to very few people, and by close I mean relationships where the parties involved feel connected by an inseperable attachment or bond.  This could involve a lot of things - friendship, kinship, or even a professional partnership.  People who feel this attachment usually don't question it, don't analyze or break it down; they just accept it as such.  And then something happens in the relationship that strains the bond between them, perhaps even breaks it, and the parties part ways over it.  We've all seen it happen, even in close relationships like with brothers or sisters.
   
   As of late I've come to recognize a zone that exists in relationships - one that separates the parties involved due to certain dissimilarities.  This gray zone is what keeps a relationship an insecure thing, which most of them indeed are, and it usually has to do with philosophical differences.  In other words, it's a zone for the things we don't share in common, don't see eye to eye, and it is ever present in all relationships.  It might not be apparent . . . but it's there.  And here's the peculiar thing about it:  this same gray zone is where we find the philosophical similarities that help hold the relationship together. 
   
   These zones that separate us, hold us apart or bring us together, in relationships is always a potential battlefield.  But even if a war over philosophies never breaks out, it's still there, still working it's magic on the relationship.  All married people must deal with this gray zone, if they have hopes of making the marriage work.  And the same is true of other family dealings, and with friendships. 
   
   So . . . how important are these philosophical differences?  I'm sure that depends on the particular relationship in question, but the gray zone differences can be more than just a  little problematic.  I have friendships, for instance, that could be close indeed were it not for the political differences between us.  And I love some of these people despite our differences of opinion on social and political and religious matters.  I'm just not close to them . . . not close in a way you can share some of your innermost feelings on certain matters.  I don't share that kind of closeness with any family member, perhaps with the exception of my wife.  I do share that closeness with some friends.
   
   I grew up in a home with parents who didn't agree on political matters.  My mother was conservative, my dad was liberal . . . but they still had a coming together of viewpoints on certain issues.  I wasn't privy to their discussions, so I don't know how they worked it out.  Maybe I should have paid more attention.  Since I'm a professionally trained political scientist, I have an advantage over most people when it comes to politics.  I enjoy a lively discussion (even an agrument) over politics . . . if it's with someone who knows enough to argue.  Most of my family and friends don't, so that's a topic of discussion best left alone.  That keeps down the arguments, the disagreements, but it also keeps down a closeness that good relationships deserve.
   
   And the sad thing is that I have absolutely no idea how to work the gray zone.  It's there, as just what it is - a barrier . . . and I can't do a damn thing about it.  And I guess that's OK because I don't have to be close to people to love them.  I worry about a lot of things, but I never worry over whether or not someone agrees with me.
   
   PMC, 4/19/08
   
   

2. Give It Wings

   17.Feb.08, 19:12 EST
   
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   There's a saying that you can call something yours only when you set it free and hope it comes back to you.  If you give it wings and let it fly away, and if it returns to you, then it's yours.   That sounds like a really nice little proverb, right?  Lots of wisdom there, it seems at first look.  Well, as far as I'm concerned it's lacking in wisdom, wit, and perspective.  I've given lots of things wings that flew off and never came back, and that left me waiting and wondering what kind of idiot would do that. 
   
   Here's my revision of that old proverb.  Let's say the thing you want to keep is a young bird you've trained.  My notion of how you give it wings is that you tie the end of a long string around one leg, and then you set it free while you hold onto the other end of the string.  If the bird doesn't take the hint and come back when he runs out the slack in the string, then you can always  yank his little ass back down.  That's the smart way of giving wings to something - freedom on a string, so to speak.
   
   I mean, come on and use your head.  The term bird brain didn't come about on its own.  Somebody had to observe that birds aren't too smart, and if you turn a bird with wings loose, he's likely to be gone for good.  That's not true of all birds, of course, because lots of people in the pigeon business turn them loose on a regular basis and usually get them back.  But we're talking about birds in general here, and the average bird out there ain't likely to become a talking parrot that has figured out quantum physics.
   
   I think the training string concept of giving wings to things holds water.  It just makes sense that freedom, something we all crave, is not a thing most people handle well.  Give a person wings without training, and he might fly off and get lost in the wild blue yonder . . . or the dumb shit might fly into an jet airplane engine and get vaporized.  Yeah, I hate to make the comparison, but people are just as dumb as birds.
   
   We got tired of a back door at our house some years ago and installed some big glass sliding doors.  Within hours of it being put in, birds started flying into it.  I'd be sitting there in the den, would hear this loud thump, and would find a wounded or dazed bird on the patio.  And as long as I lived in that house, birds never stopped flying into the glass door.  So, I've got to ask you, have you ever walked into a glass window or door?  Don't lie to me and say you haven't because almost everyone has.  Birdbrain.
   
   I taught college for 35 years and made the observation within the first ten years that teaching was for the most part a waste of time . . . if you plan on reaching most students.  I'd get so frustrated with them from time to time (usually when I was handing back  test papers) that I'd even ask, "Is there a conspiracy on this campus for all the dumbasses to sign up for my classes?"  If you teach in the hopes you're going to make a big impact on most of the kids who take your classes, you're due a big disappointment.  When it gets right down to it, you're probably reaching only a few of them, and it was the few that gave me satisfaction enough to stay with it.
   
   You can give wings to some birds and expect to see them again, and the same is true of people.  My attitude about teaching was the same as it is about almost everything in life.  I like the training string thing, but I couldn't put strings on my words.  All I could do was offer what I have to give, and then do the best I could to see to it they landed somewhere.  In other words, I put the string on the student.  If I saw a student talking when they should've been listening, I yanked their string.  "Are you having trouble hearing me?  Am I boring you?" I'd ask.
   
   I was a good lecturer, and I tried hard to explain to young people how government works.  That was my job, to teach political science (and some sociology), and I tried to do that the right way, the professional way.  In other words, I set the words free, gave them wings, then tried to make sure someone heard them.  I did that by controlling the enviroment of my classroom.  I tried to make that room into a place where ideas could flourish, where people wanted to listen to them.  I wasn't always successful in doing that, but I tried to do it. 
   
   As a writer, I can't do that.  I write all kinds of things, even some blogs, but these days I don't worry much about what happens to my written words.  I don't make an attempt to find a home for them, just give them wings and let them find a place of their own.  All writers want their words to be read, just as much as a speaker wants his words to be heard.  As a teacher, I knew who heard my words, but as a writer, I have no idea where they go.  I don't aim that at any particular public, just give them wings and watch them float away.
   
   And of all the things I've ever done in this life, doing that takes more faith than anything I've ever engaged in.  Do I think I'm making an impact on a large number of people?  No, I think not.  Do I have enough faith to give wings to words hoping they'll influence just a few, the few who always are eager to learn more?  Yes, I surely do.
   
   So fly, words.  Go find one of the few . . . and if you run across some of those dumbasses out there who don't care about words, just give them the bird.
   
   PMC, 2/27/08

3. Privilege Casts Long Shadows

   30.Jan.08, 17:48 EST
   
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   Back when I was just starting graduate school, hiring foreign professors must've been the thing to do.  It only made sense, one professor told me, that if you're going to teach far eastern politics, then get some guy from there to come in and teach the class.  The problem with that was that these foreign professors might've known their stuff when it came to international or comparative politics, but they didn't know much about the English language.  I had one good foreign professor.  The rest were a waste of time.  
   
   But there were other motives behind hiring the foreign guys.  My boss once told me they came for less money than he would've had to pay some guy packing a degree from a well known American university.  But he also admitted that we were overstaffed at the time by about two professors, the exact number of foreign profs we had in the department.  Another thing I learned about importing professors is that they sometimes bring other undesirable things with them.  Our two foreign profs were both Indians, an old guy and a young guy.  The old guy was stuffy, boring, educated in England, and he wore a turban all the time.  The young guy was bright, interesting, and friendly . . . and the older Indian treated him like a slave.  In fact, he treated his entire family like slaves.
   
   "Why don't you tell that rag-headed sonofabitch to kiss your ass," I told the younger Indian professor one day at coffee.  "You live  in America now.  We don't allow slavery here."  He looked shocked, even frightened, then told me that he could do nothing about it.  He came from a lower caste than the turban wearing jerk, and he could not defy him.  If he did, his kinfolks back in India might pay for it.  It dawned on me then and there that the shadow of privilege is sometimes a long one . . . very long, and often very dark.  Just a week ago, I read about a prominent family up north somewhere arrested and charged with slavery.  Their names were distinctively foreign, sounding like they were perhaps from Asia.  More privilege shadows falling, I thought.
   
   I'm lucky.  There's never been a time in my life when I lived under the shadow of privilege . . . at least not directly.  My father was a minister, my mother an educator, and in the small communities I grew up in, nobody looked down on me or treated me with disrespect.  I don't remember being treated special either . . . just fairly, which is the way it should be.  But most people around the world and even in this country don't have such good fortune.  The shadows of privilege are sometimes hard to see, but they're everywhere in this country.  And it's not the long shadows of the mansions they live in, or the big cars they drive, or the enormous buildings they construct to do their business.  But it's in our social institutions, our courthouses and capitol buildings, and halls of Congress where they loom the darkest and longest. 
   
   Shadows of privilege go far beyond the halls of government institutions.  They exist on Wall Street, in Corporate Offices, in Cathedrals of Religion, and other social institutions we've created.  And it is because of them that democracy, real democracy, has never really taken root in this country, or for that matter, any other country.  In a capitalist system, these long, dark shadows of privilege are unavoidable.  In autocratic systems, they are the system itself, not just shadows within the system.  It could be worse for us here in America . . . but we need to be ever mindful of them.  We could do better as a nation if we'd find ways to keep those in positions of power and privilege reminded of how they got there . . . and what their true purpose should be.
   
   Yeah, we should always resist the shadows of privilege.  And what can we do about the shadow makers?   Voice your opinion, make your will known.  Do not remain silent . . . and for a start, you can vote.  If you vote for a candidate who supports senseless wars, you've just voted for a shadow maker.  If you vote for a candidate who favors big business over the interests of the individual, you just voted for a shadow maker.  Look for the candidates with a vision of peace, of fairness and equality, and with an agenda for saving the environment around us.  That way, we'll leave less shadows of our own . . . less cause for the shadows the privileged class wants to give us.
   
   Speak out, be heard, and vote wisely. 
   
   PMC, 1/30/08
   

4. Leader of the Band

   27.Dec.07, 11:47 EST
   
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   I got the call late one evening, just a short conversation with my mother.  She was calm and composed as always, but her message hit me like a hammer.  "He's gone," she said.  "Your father passed away about an hour ago.  You better start this way."  I lived in the Oklahoma panhandle then, over 800 miles away from where my parents lived in Winona, Mississippi.  We drove all night to get there, but there was no way I'd sleep that day.
   
   I went down to my dad's office in the back of the house and found his weekly newspaper article still in his old Underwood typewriter.  He had barely started it, so I sat down and finished it.  What I wrote that day was a personal tribute to my father . . . and a farewell to his readers from him.  I closed that article with these lines:
   
   The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old,
   But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul.
   My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man,
   I'm just a living legacy to the Leader of the Band.
   
   When that article came out in the paper the next week, I got letters.  That article was my first published piece, and it started my writing career.  The words I closed with were written by Dan Fogelberg, a favorite performing artist with me, and came from a hit song he had out called Leader of the Band.  Dan died earlier this month of cancer, and when I read about it, I had to take a time out and go sit out back for a few minutes.
   
   I didn't know Dan Fogelberg, of course, but news of his passing saddened me because I felt like I knew him.  As a matter of fact, I felt close to him in a strange way without knowing a thing about him.  I pride myself in reading faces, especially eyes, and the guy had a great face with eyes that told you all you needed to know . . . at least from a distance.  He had a good look about him, and my guess is that he was a great guy. 
   
   And so I looked up his webpage and read a little about him, and I listened to some of his new songs . . . and rediscovered Dan Fogelberg.  And from that tiny bit of research, I found a song called Icarus Ascending, and these words:
   
                                       . . . So don't look down
                             Though your heart may be weary
                                           Don't look down
                               Though your wings are on fire
                                           Don't look down
                           Though the night may seem endless
                                There's a reason you're flying
                                        This fast and this far
                               Let your faith be your strength
                         And your love be your guiding star . . .
   
   Probably no one knows or cares why Dan Fogelberg had some part of me with him all those years.  I guess my caring is free now, just as he is, but it no longer belongs to me.  Maybe it followed him to a place where caring is more important than it is down here.  And Dan, old buddy, I'm still flying, and I don't look down much these days . . . but up, always up because I know that's where the lighter air is always found.
   
   And if it means anything at all now, your music has made the flight a little bit easier.
   
   PMC, 12/27/07
   
   
   

5. An Island of Discontent

   26.Dec.07, 09:04 EST
   
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   John Donne is one of my favorite poets, but that doesn't separate me from most poetry lovers.  If any one poet came up with great quotable lines, he surely tops the list.   His work Meditation XVII gave us at least two great lines, one about isolation and the other on morality.  He bring these two themes together in this work, isolation and mortality, and there is geat wisdom in the words he wrote many years ago.  Donne was obviously trying to make some sense of the great plague that swept through Europe, killing up to half the residents of some nations.  With the tolling of the death bells ringing in his ears, Donne wrote, "Perchance he for whom this bell tolls, may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myelf so much better than I am, as that they who are about me . . . may  have caused it to toll for me . . . and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tools for thee."
   
   In that same work he also said, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clob be washed way by the sea, Europe is the less . . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."  I don't know that anyone contemplates death well enough to fully understand it, but we at least understand the concept of mortality.  We die, and that's a fact of life.  Understanding why we die is more difficult, and that sends inquiring minds scurrying for answers.  I'm not sure that Donne pulls together the ideas that isolation and mortality are intertwined, or even that he intended to do so.  Poems often put forth ideas without attempting to draw conclusions as to how they fit together, but I think Donne tried to draw a line between his two ideas in this work.  Some things are just too obvious to miss.
   
   "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must me so translated . . . as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all," Donne also wrote.   These are all great lines, wonderful reminders of who we are, what our purpose might be, and where we are going in the end.  Take it as a poem to be pondered if you like, but you might also take it as a prophecy.  Is there a warning here that we need to realize our limitations as indivuals?  That's the way I see it.
   
   We live in a nation that touts individualism, and it surely acts as a separate entity in its dealings with other countries around the world.  We like to talk about our generosity when it comes to foreign aid, but that's no excuse for the way we act.  So . . . do you think George W. Bush even knows who John Donne is?  Has he ever read a poem, and if so, do you suppose he understood it?  I read lots of poems I don't understand, will freely admit that, but I think anyone with reasonable sense should understand John Donne's ideas about bells tolling and the concept that no man is an island.  Bush isn't the first politicians who can't understand those concepts . . . but he's a mortal who'll answer to the bell's call one of these days.  Just one more clod will drop into the ocean, and when that happens the entire continent will be slightly the lesser.  According to Donne, that's the way it is because we're all tied together in this thing.
   
   OK, John, I get it!  I understand the concepts of mortality, bells tolling, all that.  I appreciate the idea that no man is an island, that he's in the same boat with everybody else in the final analysis . . . but I just can't quite buy it.  In fact, I think some people are indeed islands, say for instance, like George W. Bush.  Let's not just pick on George, let's go ahead and throw in everyone like him.  These people are indeed islands, and we can call them islands of discontent.  They will never fit in with the rest of us, never be a contribution to the betterment of mankind . . . and there's lots of island people like that in the world. 
   
   Donne might be right about how a clod falling into the ocean means we're a lesser continent, but I sure hope not.  The clod thing is a slick metaphor for the point he was making, but I'd like to think more of them as clods that fall into the ocean and become little floating islands of discontent . . . away from the rest of us who'd like to see world peace, an earth where people can live in dignity without wars.  Believe me, we might end up being a smaller continent, but we sure won't miss the stupid, war-mongering clods that fell away from us.
   
   Most of the clods that drop off the continent of mankinds aren't bad and will be missed.  Maybe they'll sink to the bottom and find a new existence as an aquatic being of some kind.  But what about the bad clods?  You know the old saying that shit floats, right?  My guess is that's what hapens to them . . . they just float off into a watery wastland and remain little islands of shit forever. 
   
   I'd write a poem about my negative (but realistic) twist on Donne's no man is an island idea, but he made that diffucult, if not impossible.  It would sure be diffucult to one-up someone with lines like he came up with.  He stole the show in that regard.  It's just as well.  Nobody would want to read a poem called Shit Floats. 
   
   PMC, 12/26/07
   
   
   
   
   
   

6. Inside, Outside, Somewhere in the Midst

   27.Nov.07, 12:09 EST
   
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   The room lost definition - no ceiling or walls, just a space where I felt suspended.  To my left, I saw the doctor, maybe another person, but they were back in the mist that had closed in around me.  My two children were in the room, also enveloped in the mist, but my wife was in plain view just to my right.  She looked distraught, very frightened.  I mumbled words of support, said something about me being a tough old bird who'd weathered bad storms before.  I even tried to joke about the predicament I was in at the moment, but nobody laughed.  ICU is not a good enviroment for jokes, and my problem was a major heart attack . . . and I knew for sure that I was not just in a mist, but in the midst of a big time shitstorm.
   
   I had gone in the hospital the day before with bad chest pains, had gone through all the tests where the go into your heart and look around (I'd been scoped), and was told I needed quadruple bypass surgery.  A heart surgeon came in and briefed me on the surgery, said they'd do it the next day.  But I didn't make it that long, had a heart attack about midnight and nothing they could do could get in under control.  That's when the mist came . . . and it's when I found myself in the midst of something outside the regular world I lived in.  And I was sliding deeper into it.  My doctor moved close at one point, said he was taking me back to surgery right then.  He talked about risks involved, said there was no other way to stop the heart attack.
   
   And so . . . at two in the morning I went in to have stents put in.  I needed five, got four that night.  And they did  that with me awake, and it wasn't an experience I'd like to do again.  After that, they knocked me out.  The mist was gone now, replaced by just blackness and no awareness of any kind - at least not at first.  I was out of the mist by then but a long way from being out of the midst.  I heard a man's voice calling my name, my full name.  I turned to my right and found a man in a suit standing at the end of a long hallway.  He called my name again.  I couldn't see him well, but I stared at him for a long time, then said I wasn't ready.  He went away.
   
   Later, I found myself in an underground tunnel, feeling my way along slippery walls and walking in ankle deep water - no light, just blackness and the sounds of my feet sloshing through the water as I groped along.  I realized that my tunnel was part of a maze, a labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels, and I remember being apprehensive . . . but not afraid.  In fact, I was filled with anticipation and even eagerness to discover what I could, thinking I'd surely find my way out.  And then I was aware of light as the darkness gave way to a greyness . . . and up above me I could see light trickling through an opening.  I struggled upward, aware that my tunnel had given way to a large opening in the earth, and then I saw blue sky.  I moved closer and heard the sound of waves rushing onto a beach, and I saw and heard seabirds, gulls perhaps . . . and then I woke up to a brightly lit ICU room.
   
   I spent eight days in ICU before going home.  Not one night was spent in a regular hospital room, and recovery from a heart attack takes time.  My worst period of recovery was coming home and getting the sounds of ICU out of your head.  I'd been in a situation for eight days where people around me suffered and many of them died.  Getting rid of the ICU experience is difficult, even though you're grateful to still be alive.  I'd been in the midst of it, and in the mist of my own close call with death.  A month later I had to go back there and get a final stent put in . . . hated that encounter even more than the first, but there was no mist that time . . . and no dream either.
   
   What we all remember from our experiences may or may not be what really happened.  Too much of experience get strained through our sense of values, our ethics, our knowledge base, and we don't know exactly how much of memory is what really happened.  Perhpas our minds take over where I brains fail us, lead us through difficult situations by giving us visions and dreams to preoccupy us.  Death is something no one likes to contemplate, but somewhere along the line we come to realize that it is by no means the worst thing that can happen to us.  Maybe that's why I wasn't afraid.  So what was it that pulled me back, allowed me to send away the guy in the suit at the end of the hall?  That one's easy.  In the mist, while I dangled somewhere between here and there and realized that I was indeed in the midst of something, an overwhelming sadness came over me.  Wanting to shed that is what pulled me back.
   
   So what's to be sad about?  I asked myself that often over the next weeks and months.  Is there more for me to do here?  Is my work not yet finished?  Maybe, but I'm not a believer in predestination.  What then?  What made me so sad?  I had to think about that for quite some time before answers started coming.  For one thing, no one had given me permission to leave, and I think that's important.  The people here who love me weren't ready to turn loose, let me go.  But maybe the biggest thing was the realization that I loved them a lot more than I ever realized.  No matter how willing you are to turn loose of life here, any other existence without them seemed unbearable at the moment.
   
   My wife says I've changed, that I'm not the same man I was before the heart attacks, before my experiences with the mist . . . and the midst.  And she's had some trouble adjusting to the new me, who's a person a lot more intent on changing some things around me.  I work harder, think deeper, and brood over and ponder things more these days.  I've seen the mist, been in the midst of an experience that changed me . . . and I'm grateful for it. 
   
   PMC, 11/27/07

7. Dark Design: The Shady Side of Life

   13.Oct.07, 08:38 EDT
   
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   I'm sure you've heard it said, "He's a shady character," meaning the person was something less than honest.  Perhaps the person in the spotlight for a moment is an outright criminal, or better yet the reference might be directed at someone who just works around the borders of criminality.  We've always been able to identify politicians as potential shady characters, since the profession breeds so many of them.  Then there's car salesmen, building contractors, preachers, lawyers, doctors, morticians, house siding salesmen, telemarketers, priests, insurance salesmen, and on and on and on.  In fact, there's hardly an occupation in America where you can't find shady characters, and sometimes the pop up in places you'd least expect them - like in the child care business, the retirement home business, the police, and especially in religious organizations.  But they are there, and life in this day in age is pretty much a story of how to deal with them.
   
   Some my left wing friends blame it all on the capitalist system we live under, but that's a cop out.  We'd have it regardless of what kind of economic system we employed because there's a dark side in all of us, and that dark side seems to come forefront in people who have worked themselves into positions of power.  Yes, it's true that almost all business in America is shady, less than honest.  Yes, it's true that government is likewise just as shady, perhaps even more so because that's where the problem starts.  And yes, it's true that the people we should be able to turn to in teaching us how to deal with the shady parts of life are shady themselves - like education, religion, the community, and even family.  If being shady is a sign of deteriorating ethics and morality, then we've got a serious case of it.  I'm not quite pessimistic enough to think we've all gone to hell in a bucket of greed and self-centeredness, but I think we've damn sure bought the ticket.  In other words, we're already in the bucket waiting on high tide to take us straight out to sea . . . and partner, this is a sea of pure shit that some folks call hell. 
   
   I've done shady areas a disservice here by equating them with dishonesty, and that's not always the case by a long shot.  Many of the worthwhile things in life are shady, but not in an ethical sense.  What I'm trying to do here is make a point that we can't ignore the shady designs that are made by the less than honest people around us.  And within that central point, there's another that must be made: These people who design shady politics, business, religion, and so forth do so because that's what we have come to expect from them.  They do it because that's what we have shown them in ourselves - a tendency to respond positively to shady deals.  In other words, the prey upon our dishonesty, our greed, our shady side.  It's a classic example of target marketing.  They identified us, saw what we were likey to respond to, and then gave it to us.  If you're getting a load of shit delivered to your front door every day, it's more than likely because you ask for it.
   
   Now, hold on a minute, Mr. Penumbra Man.  It's sounds to me like you're trying to dump a load of shit on me right now . . . and I didn't ask for it.  As a matter of fact, I've never one time ask for it, so where do you get off blaming me for all the shit that gets dumped on me?  Is that what you're thinking?  Well, if not, that's exactly what  you should think.  None of us wittingly asked to be dumped on, but we do it in other ways.  We do it by example, for instance, because all a shady dealer has to do is observe us, and he knows exactly where to deliver the shit.   He's got  your number.  He knows where you live.  He knows better than you what you want.  
   
   Nobody wants a load of shit in their front yard, right?  I know for sure that I don't, but I've got one anyway.  It's invisible, but it still stinks.  It got dumped on me by unscrupulous medical practitioners, lousy insurance companies, tax assessors and collectors, politicians, doctors, and just about anybody I've had to deal with.  The biggest piles of shit come from the very government I'm forced to live under, or from some mega business outfit making big bucks off things you can't live without - like medications that keep you alive.  We are all victimized by these shady characters, these dark design people . . . and we always have been.  This is nothing new.  They've been around since  . . . well, since that chickenshit snake talked Eve into putting the pressure on Adam to eat that apple.  
   
   I don't believe for a second that the apple story every happened, but it's in the bible for a good reason.  Like many things there, we find some hidden messages of great importance in the bible, and in this case the message is:  Watch out for the snakes.  Keep you eye out for shady characters.  The message there certainly isn't that we should never trust a woman.  As a matter of fact, if I were a woman, I'd be pissed that I'd been selected as the first person in history to be taken in by a shady character.  I do believe that if God created us, then he knew we'd end up with some shady characters in our society.  The ability to be dark, to have shady spots in our character, is most probably by design, not oversight.  I'd hate to believe that my basic design was made by a Divinity that later looked down on me and said, "Well, crap!   I sure didn't see that coming."
   
   As bad as I hate to admit it, we need the dark characters in our lives.  The problem is, we may be getting an overload of darkness at the present time.  Yes, we've always had them, but it seems that as of this moment we've just got too damn many of them.  We've got them in courthouses, statehouses, and in Washington.  We've got them on Wall Steet, in board rooms, and all across the economic spectrum.  And we've got them in schools, churches, clubhouses, and just about anywhere else you look . . . in abundance.  The piles of shit are getting bigger and the stench is greater than I can ever remember it being.  What we need around here is a massive clean-up, a wholesale restoration of the entire system.  In other words, we need to kick the bastards out.  We need to quit being good receptors for all their shit.
   
   Yeah, well, that's easier said than done.  What can I do?  That's the big question, right?  Well, I've got an answer for that, and it's easy to see.  Stop giving these dark design people directions to your house.  Stop encouraging them, and the way to do that is to be more honest yourself.  It may seem like a little thing, but when a professional football player gets involved in dog fighting, he dumps shit on all of us.  When a self-righteous homophobic Senator turns out to be queer himself, that dumps more shit on us.  When a dumbass President and his band of cohort dark designers dump a needless war on us, that's a monumental pile of shit that's sure going to stink for a while.  Turn you back on these people.  Speak out against them.  That's how you send the message that you're no longer a shit dump.  
   
   It's only metaphoric, but here's a wonderful thought for you.  Wouldn't it be great to have a big beach party where we could send all the dark designers out into that big sea of shit they've created?  Yeah, we could gather at the beach with some buckets and put all the people we'd shrunk down to size in it (we did this by turning our backs on them), then wait for high tide.  We could drink some beer, have some popcorn, then stuff all these tiny little formers heads of drug companies, politicians, greedy lawyers and doctors, asshole congresmen, priests who'd been buggering the choir boys, dog fighters, abusive parents, and bankrupt educators . . . all the people who've been dumping shit on us, and set them afloat in buckets headed straight for hell.
   
   Do you like that idea?  I sure do.
   
   PMC, 10/13/07

8. And in the Beginning . . .

   29.Sep.07, 12:05 EDT
   
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   And in the beginning, there was nothing but darkness all about.  I always assumed that this is where new souls originated, in the darkness, looking to find a way to the light.  Some do, I think, which explains why I'm here . . . but mabye some don't and are stil there waiting.  Perhaps the darkness is not just the birthplace of new souls, but one where old souls return to be reclycled . . . and to help guide infant souls to the light.  I think that's true because I seem to have a faint memory of a voice in the darkness, one that was distant but still distinct, that said:  Hey!  Anybody got a light?  
   
   That had to be an old soul, you see, because a new soul wouldn't have known about light, having not yet experienced it.  But an old soul knew, and it didn't like the darkness and knew that somewhere close by, perhaps closer than any new soul surrounded by darkness could realize, was a lighted world.  I don't know for sure what happened next, but surely some curious new soul said, "What's a light?"  Thus was born the first discussion between souls . . . the old and the new . . . and this is where light was discovered by the new and rediscovered by the old.  Maybe from there the old soul taught the new one how to find a wall, and how to follow the wall to a doorway, and we all know that the switch is there beside the doorway, right?  And then you try the switch and nothing happens.  You're still in darkness, and suddenly you're thrown into despair because you think there is no way out for you.
   
   This is where the old soul is valuable; this is our greatest source of learning about portals, doorways, or threshold.  You flick the switch and nothing happens because the light comes on inside another room, somewhere past the portal you've reached.  Finding the threshold is important, but not nearly as important as learing how to open the door and move into the light.  Life is all about portals, those doors that lead to lighted places.  I like to envision life as a mansion with an almost unlimited number of hallways and rooms.  Once we leave the basement, the room of darkness, our eyes begin to adjust to the light.  Perhaps at first we just experience a poorly lighted hallway, but as we become brave enought to move about, supported by the assistance of a wise old soul, we discover rooms . . . and we all need rooms to live in.
   
   Someone once told me about his concept of life, his idea of how it was like wearing the same shirt all the time.  Life to him was something you wore, and from time to time it got too tight for you.  It was during these times, when life closes in and tries to restrict you, even choke you, that you must struggle and push at the sides and make it get loose again to where you can live within it comfortably.  It's similar to my mansion design of life, I suppose.  With me, the secret is in unlocking doors, crossing portals.  This is an adventure, you see, because you have all these rooms to explore, to live in if you like, and to make a part of your home.  But all rooms go dark from time to time.  What would life be like if we chose to just live in the rooms that are well lighted?  Would it be better?
   
   There is a parable about a wealthy man who lived in a large mansion with many rooms.  At a certain point in his life when things were going well, he lived in all the rooms, but as time went by he started locking himself out of rooms that made him sad.  Say for instance, a loved one died in a certain room - he would lock the room and never go back.  Or maybe he did something stupid in a room, like strike a child out of anger, and he therefore shut down the room.  Toward the end of his life, this man was left wandering the hallways because he'd locked all his rooms, had shut himself out of life.
   
   Life is not always better in well lighted areas.  I'm convinced that darkness is something we all need to deal with, and we can't lock ourselves out of rooms because they get dark for a while.  Darkness is not a place we want to live.  Once we leave it as new souls, we can't go back and live there again . . . but we can learn to take something from it.  We can't be afraid of it because we can't let our fear of dark places keep us away from the shaded areas, the penumbras.  That's an important thing, I think.  We would appreciate mountains less if it weren't for the valleys, and the same is true of light.  Without knowing the dark, the light is less important to us.
   
   And in the beginning there was nothing but darkness all about . . . and there was also light beyond a portal we had not yet discovered.  Finding the light means opening doors, discovering lighted spaces to live but where the darkness is not that far away . . . and somewhere in between, in the shadows, we find the knowledge that makes life truly worthwhile.
   
   PMC, 9/29/07
   
   
   
   

9. That Chromed Tunnel of Enlightenment

   27.Sep.07, 10:05 EDT
   
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   I don't remember who said it, therefore can't give appropriate attribution here, but in my readings I've run across a reference to a chromed tunnel of enlightenment.  Perhaps I got it from something C.S. Lewis wrote, or it could have been from Robert Bly or Robert A. Johnson . . . but it came from someone who thinks at a more critical level than yours truly.  I had a picture on my office wall for years, that of an old black man sitting in a rocker on his front porch, with words under it saying, "When I works, I works hard.  When I rests, I rests easy.  When I thinks, I goes to sleep."  Nothing ever made me get sleepy quicker than reading something that didn't quite catch my fancy . . . but some things I've read have sure stuck in my head like concrete.  That thing about a chromed tunnel of enlightment is one of them.
   
   When I lived back in the Oklahoma panhandle, I had a house with a dark little office.  My wife called it "the cave," and it fit me perfectly.  Like I've pointed out before, I work best in shady places.  So . . . I was in the cave one night working on a story and had an experience that changed me.  It was late, maybe one o'clock in the morning, and I remember looking at the time on my monitor and thinking I needed to get some rest, that I had an eight o'clock class that morning.  But I was on a roll, geared up and tapped off, and there's no way a writer is going to quit when you've got that kind of mood going.  My next recollection is of staring at a blank screen - no words, nothing by a blank monitor.  I scrolled back up, found words and started reading.  I checked the page number and saw that I'd written thirty pages of manuscript.  I scrolled back to the last page I could remember, started reading, and was amazed at what I'd written.  I almost said it out loud:  "Is this me?"
   
   After taking a shower and drinking a cup of coffee (it was about six o'clock then), I went back to the computer and read it again.  What I had written was good, and I had done it in a fog of semi-remembrance.  I had some recall of certain points of it, but not much.  That morning after my early class, I went across the hall to a psychologist professor's office and told him what happened.  He just stared at me for a few moments, then asked, "Do you have any idea what you've done?"  I said I didn't really know, but I thought I had just experienced a significant state of expanded awareness.  I had read all of Carlos Castaneda's books and knew all about stuff like that.  At first I had dismissed it as just more psycho-babble, more pop psychology stuff, but I'd done some research on it and found it to be fairly sound psychology.
   
   My psychology professor friend then pulled some books off his shelves, handed them to me, and said I should read them.  We'd talk later, he said.  One of the books was by Robert Bly, a poet.  But Bly talked a lot about shadows, and that just got me started on a quest for knowledge about shadowlands.  I read Lewis, and Johnson, and especially Jung, and perhaps came away from it with a different take on shadowlands than do most people.  Lewis saw them as areas of our characters or personalities we need to avoid.  Life is best lived in the light, not the shadows, he said.  Karl Jung said far more, talked and wrote at length about the shadow self, and it is from him that I learned the most about myself.  I do not call this my dark side, my evil side, because I'm a firm believer that these things don't come from our shadows.  Is there a blackness within us that houses these things, or are these from our lighted areas?  And what about a state of expanded awareness.  Where does that come from?  
   
   Critical thinking is something that takes preparation and courage, and it happens only when we find a threshold leading to that part of us that's capable of true awareness.  According to my psychologist friend, I experienced it because I found a threshold.  After I thought back over it a while, I realized what it was - how I got in, so to speak.  And since then, I've been back many times because going there got easier as I grew more accustomed to the terrain.  Study is important in finding the threshold, but it's even more critical when it comes to experiencing critical thinking at that level of awareness.  The bravery comes in because you have rid yourself of some contamination before you can experience real understanding, expanded awareness, or whatever you want to call it.  Contamination, put plainly, is our filtration system - it's what we put new information through before we log it as knowledge.  Most people probably aren't aware that most of the new information that bombards then on a daily basis gets rejected by this filtrations system . . . and therefore nothing new is learned.
   
   A few quick examples, and we'll move on.  Religion is perhaps the most significant roadblock to knowledge of anything I can bring to mind.  People feel comfortable with their preconceptions about life based on their religious belivef (or perhaps their lack thereof), and won't budge far from them.  Throw out a topic like stem cell research, and the liklihood is that religion rears it's stubbon head and says no, this is a bad thing and we will not examine it.  It could be any hardened belief system that stops the flow of information, of learning.  Try talking to a homophobe about gay rights and see how far you get.  Ask some good old boy about a woman in the White House and see what you get.  And not all our our contamination is caused by ignorance.  On the contrary, sometimes it's caused by too much education in an area that frowns on spiritual or mystical things.  Most people with science based educations have a hard time with things that operate in the gray areas . . . in the shadows.
   
   Robert A. Johnson writes about the necessity of men getting in touch with the wild man within them . . . which goes against the grain with many psychologist who think we should find our softer more feminine side.  According to Johnson, we need to get to know the angry side of  us . . . and I think he's right.  Robert Bly talked about a long bag we drag behind us, about how we've stuffed that bag full of things that were unpleasant to us and so we discarded them by stuffing them in this bag.  The bag gets longer and heavier as life goes along, drags us down, he said.  Perhaps I already had a jump on this thinking because I'd been through rehab for alcoholism, had been trained to learn how to examine parts of myself that needed adjustment.  I knew how to deal with that long bag.  I knew about the importance of exploring the shadowlands we've formed in our minds, and I knew how to be brave about it . . . but not courageous enough at that point to find my way to expanded states of awareness.
   
   This is a discussion that could go on forever, and I'll come back to it from time to time.  I'll end this by saying that I sure don't live my life as a critical thinker.  I'm capable of doing it from time to time because I'm inquisitive and brave enough to go there . . . but I sure as hell don't live there.  I'm not sure anyone can because it's not always a fun place to be.  It's not always a great adventure, and it's not always all that enlightening.  From my point of view, I don't think enlightenment is always healthy for us.  We're just not ready for some things, even if we are capable of doing it, of actually going there and examining it.   And if you think you'd like to know everything about yourself, here's a few things to think about.  If you're a guy, would you like to meet your feminine self face to face?  If it's really true that all of us are capable of murder under extreme conditions, do you want to meet the killer within you?  Do you even want to meet your angry and potentially violent self?  Do you want to meet your own death?
   
   No, I didn't think so.
   
   PMC, 9/27/07
   
   
   

10. More about shadows

    23.Sep.07, 13:58 EDT
    
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    I've been a fan of C.S. Lewis for some time, even though we're not in agreement about some things, especially religion.  Lewis, you may already know, started out as an agnostic, perhaps even an atheist, and then ended up being a Christian.  I started off being a Christian, then worked my way toward agnosticism.  I'd say I'm a devout agnostic, but how can you be adamant about being undecided?  And I've always hated fence sitters, middle of the roaders.  I hate it when someone tells me they're a moderate, that they try to go right down the middle, and that they're that way because they haven't decided which way to go.  That's not a moderate; that's a fence sitter. I'm not a middle ground person about much of anything, but I can see the difference between standing on middle ground and sitting on a fence somewhere. I can accept the fact that many people are moderates, and I even admire many of them.  I do not admire a fence sitter, and if you follow that logic, I suppose I don't care much for agnosticism either.
    
    Lewis wrote about shadowlands, describing them as the darkened areas of our life where most people chose to live.  He talked about how much better off we'd be if we'd live our lives in the open, out in the light when things are clearer.  I can't argue with that reasoning, even though I surely don't view shadowlands like he did.  Anyone who really knows shadows understands that there is no shadow without light, and that shadows sometimes help use better understand what is lighted and easily seen.  I have examined C.S. Lewis's writings to see if I could make some sense of his decision to become a Christian.  Mostly what I get from it is that he chose Christianity because he couldn't find any real reason not to, and I suppose that makes sense to some people.  It would probably make sense to a moderate, maybe even to a liberal or a conservative . . . but not to a fence sitter because very little makes sense to them.  If it did, they'd get their formerly confused asses off the fence and go stand somewhere.  Everybody's got to believe in something, right?  I've often quoted W.C. Field's remark about that, which is, "Everybody's got to believe in something.  I believe I'll have another beer."  But what Lewis says makes some sense to me, at least as far as fence sitting is concerned.
    
    Poor Einstein got hounded throughout his life by people wanting to know where he stood on God.  Did he believe in God?  If so, what were his beliefs?  He finally made a definitive statement late in life that he did indeed believe in God, but not one who concerned himself with the daily doings of mankind.  The statement was definitive enough for me . . . but not for most people.  But if you see God as a creator, how can you think he'd forget about us?  With some folks, you just can't win because they're never going to let you off the hook.  Even Einstein couldn't put off the Christians because they weren't about the let him alone.  They needed for the world's greatest mind to recognize them, to agree with them . . . and I for one and greatly satisfied that he did not give in to them.
    
    I'm not opposed to Christianity as a belief or even as a basis of religion.  What I am opposed to is the inclination they have to reject all other faiths, especially the ones that don't agree with their narrow construction of who is righteous and who isn't.  Most of the jerks I've met in this life have been Christians, not atheists or agnostics.  The really mean people I've known aren't Muslems or Jews or Hindus either . . . just Christians propped up by the belief they're justified in what they do because they're in God's Country Club for Jesus People.  You're not, and if you refuse to join up with them, then you're lost.  Lost?  Lost from what?  Oh, I get it - I'm lost from your way of looking at God . . . and accordingly I'm doomed and will burn in Hell forever.
    
    I'm hard to threaten when it comes to religious beliefs.  I do believe in God, but not one who is so fundamentally limited as Christians would have me worship.  I don't believe in clubs of any kind, especially religious clubs and organizations who profess to understand God, and I really distrust those who claim to have a personal relationship with him.  I'm with Einstein . . . bless he heart.  I don't care that God may have forgotten me, or perhaps doesn't know I exist at all.  It's OK because he created the universe within which I exist, set up the conditions concerned with my being here.  He loves me as a part of all that exists here, and he gave me a mind good enough to find him . . . if and when I need him . . . and that's all I will ever need from him.   I think he loved me enough to set me loose within this great universe he created, pretty much free of rules and restrictions, and with the ability to find my own way.  And I've had a helluva journey through life so far, have taken some wrong roads from time to time, but I am not lost.  I know exactly where I am and what I'm doing here, and I don't worry much about where I'm going next.  That's all a part of the mystery that has made life worth living.
    
    My Christian friends say they pray for me, and I don't discourage that.  Believe it or not, I believe in the power of prayer . . . and I even do that myself from time to time - not like a Christian, not like a Buddhist even, and probably not like you.  I'm not about to say that your way is completely wrong, or that mine is right . . .  for anyone but me.  Do I ever ask for anything when I pray, or do I just say thanks?  Oh, sometimes I say something like, "Hey, are you by any chance paying any attention to what's going on here?  Can't you do something about that?"  I usually say that when I see some religious nut doing something totally stupid.  It's almost like saying, "Hey, he's one of your guys, so straighten him out, would you?"
    
    But that's just me . . . and I'm me and nobody else.  If you don't agree with my way, then do it your way - I sure won't care, as long as you don't do it where I'm standing.  C.S. Lewis and his ideas about Christianity never won me over to his way of thinking, but he at least pointed the way for me.  I stand where I do, on this ground I've devised for myself, because I can find nor reason not to be here.  At least I'm not on the fence, huh?
    
    PMC, 9/23/07

11. What is it about barns?

    21.Sep.07, 12:23 EDT
    
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    I picked a picture of a barn in the fog as the background for the logo for this page because it signifies a point I'm trying to make.  I explained the point in yesterdays blog about penumbras, but the barn thing needs some explanation.  Maybe not for you, perhaps, but for my own piece of mind . . . and because I know I'll have to answer the question: what's a barn in the fog got to do with anything?  I could just say It's there because I just like barns, which is true, but that won't cut it.   So, here's my explanation - for what it's worth.
    
    The barn is symbolic when compared to another structure, the house.  In some ways, the barn is a house - it's just a home for animals and things related to farm or ranch work.  The barn also symbolizes a change in attitudes, if you will, from the house to there.  Maybe you've heard something like this before.  "Get that out of the house, and right now.  If you're going to act that way, do it at the barn."  Moms have said that a lot.  Or, "Language like that belongs out around the barn but not in here."  Maybe that's your dad talking when you let a word slip that you're not supposed to be using.  Even stronger talk might be, "I'm going to take you out to the barn and beat the stuffing out of you, if you do that again."  Either parent might say that.  Get the picture?
    
    Barns at least symbolize a less formal atmosphere as that of a house where people live.  Maybe that's why I've often felt as much at home in a barn as I do in the house . . . sometimes even more so. I don't have a barn, and that's too bad.  If ever I kick up a bottle with a genie in it on the beach somewhere, my wish is already formed on my lips.  "Could I have a barn?  Maybe just a little one that will fit in my back yard?"  I like the unrestricted atmosphere of the barn, the freedom to get rowdy and talk nasty if I want to.  And . . . I like it's penumbra status.  Most barns just seem to blend in with the setting of a farm or ranch.  I've often been taken by a particular barn, then when we left the ranch ask whoever is with me, "Did you notice that barn?"  Most of the time they say, "No, was there a barn?"  I just take for granted that if there's a farm or ranch, there's a barn.  And I'm the guy who notices things like that and will remember the barn and perhaps not the house.
    
    Barns are good places for surveying the terrain, checking things out.  It's often the energy center of a ranch or farm, and a nice place to hang out.  I even like homes made to look like barns.  I don't know what that says about me (maybe that I'm not house broke yet?), but I'm just that way.  Some things can be taken too far, though.  Not many years ago, I attended an old time branding over in New Mexico on a friend's ranch.  He had a big barn, a metal one, and I slept in there that night with several cowboys who'd come to work the round-up.  Do you have any idea how noisy a metal barn can be on a windy night?  I hardly slept a wink, and that makes the next day of work hard to deal with.  And it proves that I don't love all barns.  If metal is all you've got, then it will have to do . . . but I prefer the old time wood barn.  And that's what you see in my profile.
    
    PMC, 9/21/07

12. Penumbra

    20.Sep.07, 22:12 EDT
    
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    So what is a penumbra?  Simply put, it is that area around either a dark or bright spot.  Envision a spotlight on a stage, if you will, and then think about the area immediately around the glow of the spotlight.  That's a penumbra effect  . . .  that area you see but don't quite see.  It's not out of view, not obscured, but still not exact enough to have precise definition.  Some people have described areas just outside of a black hole as a penumbra, others have called them shadows or shade.  I think of a penumbra not so much as a shadow, but more as an opaque area that's not defined and therefore not readily noticed.  
    
    A penumbra man is someone who is not a spotlight person, and that's defines me perfectly.  I've always been a curious observer of what is around me - a person able to pick out detalis most people will miss.  I not only take note of the penumbra, I study it because that's where I am most at home.  From my slightly shady place just out of the bright lights or away from the darkness, I can observe without being noticed.  I'm not hiding.  People know I'm there, they just don't pay much attention to me.  I like it there because if I get tired of my place, I can move into the dark area where no one will see me at all, or move into the spotlight where all will see me.  The penumbra is a good place for someone who wants to be near something but still not close enough to interrupt the act in progress.  
    
    I find it diffucult to write about things I actually took part in, but I have little trouble describing what I witnessed, what I observed.  As a non-participant of the action, but still near the action, I am able to identify things I would have missed as an actor.  A good storyteller needs a good memory and a vivid imagination, and not necessarily in that order.  But what I see from my slightly shady spot in the penumbra is what provokes my imagination to action.  Seeing is not just believing, it's motivational.  Monkey see, monkey do - right?  Well, it's not quite that simple, but it goes somethng like that.
    
    Come back sometime and we'll talk about the importance of shadows.  
    
    PMC, 9/20/07