Harry

            I have been hiking and I am tired. I lie down on the edge of a grassing opening in the forest. Spring lingers at this altitude and the ground is covered with blossoming dandelions. The surrounding forest is of aspen trees and they are newly leafed out and vibrant with that particular bright green of spring. The leaves are quaking with a gentle breeze and the treetops sway as if dancing to a hymn they sing to themselves. The creek is high from snowmelt and I hear its song clearly. It fills the air. It smells good here. It sounds good and is beautiful to see. The sky is an incredibly beautiful blue edged by the distant dark green conifer-covered ridges, snow-capped peaks, and the nearby aspens.

            I am really tired and lean my head against a tree trunk and close my eyes. I could sleep but think of my grandfather Harry, my father’s father, and one memory leads to another. He died like this sitting against a tree trunk one night in a wooded area of Pennsylvania. My father had gotten him a job as a night watchman in the same summer camp where I was working as a waiter. He had recently retired from being a plumber in Brooklyn. It is strange how I have gotten to know him better through my memory than I did as a child and teenage. He didn’t interact with us kids much and my grandmother would most often visit by herself. He was a gruff sort of person. I was growing up in white suburbia and he had a lot of dirt beneath his fingernails. His blood runs through me but I didn’t have a heartfelt understanding of what that meant while he still lived.

            He was born somewhere in the Ukraine and escaped the persecution of the pogroms against the Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a child then. I heard the telling of their escape and immigration to Canada and, for some, to the United States from his mother, my great-grandmother, one of three great-grandmothers of mine that I was privileged to know. My father and I were visiting her in Toronto. They traveled at night, dependent on others to guide them. It was hard and dangerous. One of her sons drowned at a river crossing. Harry was carried across the current on someone’s back.

            Later in my life I would reflect upon and lament the scarcity of shown affection in my immediate family. More hugs would have been nice, but that just wasn’t the way it was. Now I get a glimpse of something else; of a tree growing through persecution, of immigration, of economic depression, the hustle of New York City street life and of people struggling for a better life, one that avoided some of the sufferings they lived through. And I see hugs and “I love you”s packaged in providing a stable home life, a decent education, and regular visits to a doctor or dentist. My gratitude to all those whose blood and hard work, care, and love enlivens me now. Thank you. I include the nameless man who swam with my grandfather on his back.

            Harry’s job at the camp included keeping us teenage boys from getting over to the girl’s side. It is an old story. Remember the Trojan horse? Where there is a will there is a way, and he probably never stopped any of us through either his design or ours. Sometimes we traveled through the woods and sometimes we would travel by ‘borrowed’ rowboat. The girls always welcomed us and we would spend hours whispering and making out in their cabins. I remember clearly seeing him sitting up against a tree in the dark of the night, sleeping or smoking a cigar. It might have been that I saw him the night he died of a heart attack. I might be merging memories but most importantly I remember him being happy out there, away from the city and whatever his life in Coney Island was like. I see him being content and at ease as if that long journey from the Ukraine was always headed to this spot on the shore of a lake under the night’s stars with kids all around, a cheap cigar, and no one to pester him. It was a good death and it is a good memory. Go with peace grandfather.

Cruising and wondering

May 28, Dixon

            This morning I drove to higher ground, but this time it was not to walk in the forest but to drive through the villages, to be with the happenings of people. Before doing that I walked a short distance from where I am living to the studio of a local painter who was having an open house. His paintings were of landscapes, old homes, and small isolated churches. He grew up here and his worked emanated a love for the country: proud, yet simple. The colors were vibrant as if every day, if not a spring day, was one celebrating it nonetheless. I am sure we could have talked more than we did in spite of having just met, but there were a couple of well dressed, older women who wanted to talk of art, of artists they knew, and looked to be collectors. He looked a little weary about the task at hand.

            I drove slowly on back roads through relatively isolated valleys, mesmerized by the landscape and the sky. The irrigation ditches were full, the fields green, and there were still fruit trees blooming. I only wanted to be open, colored by the light and scented by my surroundings. I trusted. There was refuge. And beauty. And gratitude.

            I thought of how we are molded by the land. The earth is truly our home. We are the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the sun. We are many and we are time.

            I can relate to people who live close to the land. By close I mean they let the land speak to them instead of making something of it, adding meaning, be it sacred or mundane. Either way it is desecration, and, to be honest, I find those hiding behind the veil of sacredness the ore distasteful of the two. It leaves a bad taste. One has not yet learned to listen, and the other is too busy listening to his or her own chatter.

            There is that diversity here: an old adobe or log home next to a new Santa Fe style home with the latest styles and technology. I wonder where we humans are headed? I pass two houses where friends lived and have since died. I see young people and old people. It is a holiday weekend and people will soon be gathering.

I Go Blank

            In a writing group I participate in, we were prompted with the following: “I go blank every time I...” I would like to share my response of then and some further ruminations of now.

            “I go blank every time I see a headline like the one of last week; ‘Gifford shot in head, six dead, nineteen wounded,’ and that moment of incomprehension, in contrast to the event itself, is a testimony to some unarticulated belief in the goodness of people and appreciation in the celebration of life and love.”

            I come back, over and over again to that moment when the props fall, the lights are turned on, nothing adorns and all is naked. It is a moment of truth, stripped of justifications, moral judgments, emotional persuasions, and intellectual dissection. Even a glimpse is precious, even if it is painful or bewildering.

            “In that blank moment there’s a small gateway to a long, narrow tunnel through the sarcasm, anger, disillusionment, and sadness of my psyche. I am touched, and then it is gone, sealed once more with all those layers I hide behind...”

            There are questions that drive my inner life, great questions, great being defined by as having no definitive answers. Some have fallen to the wayside, having lost relevance in the passing of time, but this one looms large like a seamless, smooth, steep iron mountain, impenetrable and without handholds or footholds Simply, how does one keep a tender heart amidst the challenges, the pain, the violence, and the suffering of the human world? How can we keep coming back with an open heart and arms, year after year?  It is a spiritual question and quest for me, and that momentary rent of my persona is just enough to show me the path. It is like a lightening flash on the darkest of nights in a forest. Oh yes, over there...

            “...all those layers of truths, of commonsense and acceptance, all adding up to what amounts to a surrender to the obvious.”

            Courage, I am told, is not being fearless, but of being fearful and moving forward nonetheless. I am old enough now to know, with my heart as well as my head that I am mortal and the bigger chunk of my life has already been lived. Friends have died; too many of them were younger than I am now. Will I embrace the voices I hear or not? Will I fulfill my path and honor that which deeply yearns for expression? Yes or no? What is there to lose by hiding? Or to gain by crawling out of those moments that tear holes in my armor? It is hard. I appreciate the help of my friends. We need to help each other.

            “But I don’t really give up. I pretend, and at that, not very well.”

            Thank you for listening to me. May those hurt one way or another that day heal and go with peace.

           

           

Two haibun*

*a short prose piece incorporating a haiku poem

One by me:

            Lately I seem to be acutely aware in my dealings with people with what seems to be lacking rather than what I see or hear: a call that doesn’t come, an explanation cut short, a hand that doesn’t wave or eyes that don’t meet, and it strikes deep. How do you respond to what remains in the dark? I am reminded of a time I was camping in the forest, looking at the night sky:

            “captivated by

                        what isn’t there-

            quarter moon”

and this one by the master poet Basho always reminds me to be grateful and less self-centered:

(two notes :

1)    the cry of a monkey was noted in Chinese and Japanese poetry for its plaintive nature, and poets would seek it out just as they would an autumn day when the maples were turning or a full moon evening. These outings were a common practice among the privileged classes

2)    child abandonment was common among the impoverished.)

“I was walking along the Fuji River when I saw an abandoned child, barely two, weeping pitifully. Had his parents been unable to endure this floating world which is as wave-tossed as these rapids, and so left him here to wait out a life as brief as dew? He seemed like bush clover in autumn’s wind that might scatter in the evening or wither in the morning. I tossed him some food from my sleeve and said in passing,

            ‘those who listen for the monkeys:

                        what of this child

                                    in the autumn wind?’”

translation by David Landis Barnhill

            

Border Stories

“...the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

            Thomas Berry

           

            I use to think of myself as being fairly intelligent, but I wonder if I am the wiser, or less so, by realizing how little I truly understand. I have lived here on the border with Mexico for ten years now and remain dumbfounded how people living within shouting distance of each other cannot understand each other’s language or that an imaginary line can create such differences in economic well-being.

            Even small things can reveal surprises and stories. I use to find a lot of objects left behind by those crossing the border illegally while out hiking along the jeep roads and trails. Some of the things I would find were left behind when they were apprehended by the Border Patrol; things like cigarette lighters, nail clippers, and toothbrushes. These are considered potential weapons. Other things like backpacks, clothing, and personal objects are left behind when the migrants make their connections for transport north. Vehicles are packed with twenty or more persons at times. There is no room for anything except what they wear or perhaps what can fit into a pocket.

            I would sometimes take found objects home. The lighters were handy. There were blankets, hats, nail clippers and all sorts of interesting things. In time these objects forged a connection that went beyond whatever practical use they served me. I say this in hindsight. It wasn’t my intent. I came to a fuller realization that there is no such thing as a small thing and no act without consequence. Sleeping under a blanket or holding something someone else has carried across the length of nations has meaning. I can’t say what it is and I fear defiling it by making feeble attempts. I often struggle to find words that denote significance without implying that something can be understood, but we all breathe the same air.

            A few years back I was working as a RN in the emergency room. A SUV that was seen driving from a mountain access road was pursued by the Border Patrol and eventually halted when strips laid in the road for that purpose flattened the tires. The driver lost control. The vehicle was overloaded with nineteen or twenty passengers and it rolled into cars that had been pulled to the side by the police. If I remember right, nineteen of the injured were brought to our emergency room. There were others that were flown directly to the trauma center and others were taken directly to the morgue. There were no drugs, no weapons, just people looking to work or to reunite with family.

             I understand the need for immigration control. I don’t understand how it mitigates our humanity. Maybe one has to be there, talk to these folks, see their hunger, their embracing of your smile or cowering in fear, to cover their wounds, or watch them die in order to see the weakness of our explanations and justifications. I hope not, although it does leave an impression. They are not concepts or statistics. They are people. Trust me, they are not so different from you or me and for all the suffering we inflict on these people I have come to believe that we, collectively as communities and as a nation, and we as individuals of these collectives are the greater losers for turning our backs on them. We lose a chance to honor something very worthy and to show gratitude for the good fortune we have.

            I am trying hard to say something, a gut feeling about who we are and I risk compromising my effort by saying too much or too directly, so, please indulge me one more story, one more experience that has become part of the worldview I hope to share. The beauty of telling a story is that I don’t have to decide what it should mean for you. My great hope is that you listen with an open mind. The Christian mystic Thomas Merton said in his book, ‘No Man is an Island,” that “A person of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself.”  The onus is on me and if one person out there steps out of their citadel of concepts to be touched by the struggle of their fellow men and women, someone who would have contentedly and complacently kept their distance otherwise, I will feel fulfilled in my endeavor.

            This too happened while I was nursing. At the time I worked in the Intensive Care Unit. A young woman was rushed across the border by ‘Cruz Roja’ ambulance service and left at an outlying hospital. From there she was flown to where I worked, it being the nearest place with a surgeon. This woman had been pregnant and in the early stages of labor when the doctors in Mexico discovered that she was breach and recommended that she have a caesarian delivery for which payment was expected in advance. She did not have the money and went ahead with a vaginal delivery that left her hemorrhaging. They were unable to staunch the bleeding, even with surgery. She arrived at our hospital in severe shock and was given many units of blood and went into surgery twice again that night. She remained unconscious. She was dying. Truly everyone did everything possible. Truly, it was too late. She was going to die a needless death. The border guards would not let her husband across to be with her for the lack of the proper papers. They had one other child.

            Death was no stranger to those of us there that night, but there was something so poignant, so intense that it cast a spell over the whole hospital. Little was said between us. When someone would try to say something their words would falter and fade, sentences were left unfinished, tears shed and all night long something happened that I had never seen before or since. People came to see her: nurses, doctors, technicians, people who had nothing to do with her care. They came as if on a pilgrimage and stood by her bed unable to really comprehend what we were witness to. Sadness welled like a great ocean wave that one never knows from whence it comes or why and at dawn she died. Her husband never made it to her bedside despite our pleas.

            I wrote a poem of sorts and it remains an expression of my experience that night:

“This sunrise

            the priest sets the crucifix

            at the bedside as

I watch

            sadness bloom and take faith’s hand

            for the last dance of a long night.

A small Mexican woman

            dies from birthing a child.

All night

            women came to embrace her

            in love and fear

            and beautiful incomprehension.

We were

            the end of the line

            of too many circumstances and injustices.

This sunrise

            seems to hesitate while

            sadness and faith dance on and on

            into a new day.”

            I recollect and reminisce on these events because it is like tilling the soil in the garden prior to planting. I aspire to fulfill an ache to explore what it means to be human, to be me. I do not hope to satisfy this ache, only to honor it. Sometimes it means turning aside from choices that are safer, more comfortable, or offer gratification of my immediate emotional needs. I am supported by a deep belief in our connections to each other and all that lives. I believe in an intrinsic inclination toward kindness. I believe this not because it is necessarily true, but because it is empowering. I am supported by you, and, I hope you find some support in me

           

Thank you.

            Be well.

            

Can We Do Better?

Utah Firing Squad Executes Convicted Killer

As reported by Associated Press

“Draper Utah- A death row inmate who had used a gun to fatally shoot two men suffered the same fate Friday Morning as he was executed by a team of marksmen- the first time Utah used the firing squad to carry out a death sentence in 14 years.

            A barrage of bullets tore into Ronnie Lee Gardner’s chest where a target was pinned over his heart. Two minutes later an ashen Gardner, blood pooling in his dark blue jumpsuit, was pronounced dead at 12:17 a.m....

            The five executioners, certified police officers who volunteered for the task and remain anonymous, stood about 25 feet away, behind a wall cut with a gunport, and were armed with matching .30 caliber Winchester rifles. One was loaded with a blank so no one knows who fired the fatal shot. Sandbags stacked behind Gardner’s chair kept the bullets from ricocheting around the cinderblock room.

            Utah Dept. of Corrections Director Thomas Patterson said the countdown cadence went “5-4-3...” with the shooters starting to fire at the count of 2.

            Gardner’s arm tensed and jerked back when he was hit. As the medical examiner checked for vital signs the hood was pulled back, revealing that Gardner’s head was tilted back and to the right, his mouth slightly open...”

            The atrocity here is so obvious, it is impossible to put it in words. I let the description speak for itself. I am tempted to wish all those who would justify our communal acts of violence and wrath could witness firsthand such brutality. I imagine that at least some would hesitate in the future before being an armchair god of life and death if we were all there in that room as this man was executed, together.

            And yet I know the anger I feel at this moment is just as insidious in hardening the heart and building barriers between me and my world, and others and their worlds. It is a raw energy that needs direction so the acts that follow bring positive consequences rather than perpetuating violence and fear. I wish for people like Gandhi to be among us, to help us, our world, but in my wishing I sense there are the seeds of many Gandhi’s among us, right now. If we cultivate the soil for these seeds, they can grow. And if we trust the practice of nurturing goodness, goodness can manifest. For some of us the fields we cultivate will be small, and for some they will be large.

            So, I ask these questions. How can this kind of punishment not rank equal to the very acts of violence that we hold criminal and abhor? What do we achieve by it? Justice? Does it deter other murders? Is our world now safer, kinder, or healthier? Does anyone even really feel better for it? I put these thoughts out there with my hope for a healing world; for us, for our children, and for their children.

Thank you.

Singing

            Dedication: To all of us who can’t sing, write, lead, love, hammer a nail, or talk to God, I tell this story, one that has been told countless times for ages and ages. It is true and I know it doesn’t stand alone, neither in my life or yours. I dedicate it with prayers for our well-being.

            I was in the seventh grade and had grown up in a family that did not sing. It was assumed that we could not carry a tune. Up to this time I don’t recall even trying very hard, definitely at no more than a whisper or as a pantomime. No exceptions, not even ‘Happy Birthday’ was safe. I lamented this and deeply felt the lack in my life. I wanted to sing songs like other people. It did not seem to be too much to ask for.

            I enrolled into chorus at school. After a couple of classes the teacher took me aside to tell me that she did not think I could “fit in.” I could not carry a tune. I would be a burden on everyone else. Seventh grade chorus obviously was for young people who could sing and not for those who aspired to find their voice. Whispers became silence and pantomime a stone face. The only exception was many years later when I had children of my own. I would sing ‘Happy Birthday’ just loud enough.

            My story jumps almost forty years. Forty years! That’s a lot of time and a big piece of a lifetime! I had bought a cheap guitar and was playing with a friend of mine. We strummed chords and he sang folk songs. His voice was not particularly strong or melodic, but we had fun. After a while though, he became frustrated by my not singing and delivered the ultimatum to sing or he was not interested in us playing together any longer. Now, we were close friends and neither of us had large social worlds. We were important to each other. I knew he would not stand in judgment. He could care less about the quality of my voice. In hindsight I would say it was a matter of tough love. Whatever his intention, I had to confront all those people who told the child I was that he could not sing. It was a showdown with no escape, no whispering a tune or mouthing words. The more voices that emerged from my past, my fears of being inadequate, from other vulnerabilities; of being a fat kid with a hair-lip or a Jew or being shy, the more they shouted the more important it became to sing a fucking song! So simple, yet so hard. You know what I mean? I could not carry the weight of all those voices anymore. Now was the time. Now is always the time.

            I am not going to lament those forty years it took for me to learn how to sing. That’s just what it took. I am grateful that it didn’t take longer.

“I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,


When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,


When he beats his bars and would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,


But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,


But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –

I know why the caged bird sings.”

            Paul Laurence Dunbar from his poem: Sympathy