Loss

A man stands in a large cavern underground.  The feeble light of his lantern brushing gently against some of the nearby walls before it disappears into darkness.  A feeling of an immense space weighs down upon his head and darkness is heavy.  A shuffle of his feet calls echoes from the corners of the vast space around him.  He feels as though he is in the womb of the Earth.  A word that comes to his mind is ‘depth’.

A man stands in the middle of a grand colosseum.  Arching high over his head are the supports for this architectural feat.  Impressive, gigantic, and immense it encompasses a very large wide-open space that can easily accommodate thousands of people.  A word that comes to his mind is ‘grandeur’.

A man stands in the middle of a large warehouse.  He remembers the past when the warehouse was full of equipment, of bustling people and constant activity.  Now they are all gone and only the walls of the building stand, its windows are silent witnesses to the quiet and solitude that has taken the place of industry and energy.  The building is now a husk.  A word that comes to his mind is ‘loss’.

@

I was reading “Stranger in a Strange Land” earlier.  As I lay in bed, awaiting sleep to drift over me, my mind goes to something I read the day before.  One of the characters described kissing the man from mars as wonderful in that he did so with his entire self and that he tried to experience just the person he was kissing, with no distractions, no time, nothing else but her.

As I thought of this I remembered a time back in early 95.  There were three or four of us in my car and we were returning from a short drive in the country and going back to the UAM campus.  The topic of kissing came up and I had made the declaration that a kiss was when one tried to experience every molecule and fiber of another self, a cherished self, a self that is separate and to whom every fiber and molecule of one’s own self tried to merge with.  The kiss was the bridge in an attempt to dispense with me/you and instead make ‘we’… though even that is wrong, for a we is a plural of two individuals and the drive, the hope, in such a kiss was the loss of individual.  One knows one’s own body intimately, and to be able to know one’s beloved body as well, every detail, every breath, every heartbeat, would bring alongside another consciousness like that of another self-consciousness.  No separateness, but only one where there were earlier two.

As I remembered this very real drive and belief of mine, I remembered such kisses on my part.  It wasn’t a drive to do away with, or discharge, pent up sexual energy.  It was a deliberating, an experiencing of the fullness of one’s beloved, honestly in an attempt at such, and not just a passionate kiss born of one’s libido.  The thought of my last great love, a remarkable woman indeed, came to mind.   I had seen her again recently after several months of separation after my break-up with her.  After seeing her I’ve noticed odd stirrings of emotion, though I am unable to name what these emotions are within me.  I commented at the time that I could not name these emotions.  Still cannot.  Though something stirs beneath the waves, for what else would cause the surface to stir as such?

In my near lucid state, drifting close to sleep as I was, I imagine sitting before her and contemplating her face and her looking back at me.  It is quite easy to imagine her face beaming with patience, love, and joy, and asking me what I felt.  It is all she has ever given to me.   And sitting there, in this imagined place within my mind, I told her a story.

@

A woman cried her eyes out and wailed in anguish on the phone.  Finding it hard to breath she choked back sobs and clutched her phone as though she could squeeze oxygen from it.  I approached her and talked her through some exercises to calm her down, center her awareness onto her body.  And she began to settle a little in anxiety.  Her broken heart, however, did not abate.  Tears streamed down her face she let her broken heart sink lower into the depths of her being.

I looked at her and told her that she had a precious gift.  Looking at me with eyes of disbelief, she sobbed a “what is that”?  I told her that she was feeling deep pain, loss, love, anguish, feeling what it was that makes us human and gives life meaning.  Meaning is not arbitrary values given in the tally of a book, life is not binary, but deep felt emotions that saturate the marrows of our bones and colors the skies of our horizons.  We may be proud about our self-consciousness, as though this were what separates us from animals, and yet this is nothing without meaning, without emotion.  Even a machine can tally items into binary.  A dog has a felt meaning to things around it.  Which has the better existence?  To be able to feel is a gift that should be cherished.

She cried more, not believing what she was hearing.  Pain is not a blessing, she thought, not something to be cherished.  It was anguish and anguish was to be done away with.  And yet I told her that I know people who found it hard, if not impossible, to feel pain and anguish.  Would that I myself could feel as she did, to cry as deeply as she did over the loss of a love.

@

In my imagined meeting with one of the loves of my life, whom I walked away from, I could look upon her and see her joyous face looking back at me.  Such a beautiful person to sit with me, beaming her love for me as a person back at me with no demands placed upon me.  She asked only to know me.  And as I sit there, struggling to understand this feeling within me, the herculean effort to simply name the feeling that I might be having, I think of the image of the vastness of the empty warehouse.  It feels lonely to the man only because he can remember what it once was, how it once felt, even if it is only the ghost of an echo.  It is enough to make the empty warehouse feel deteriorated, cold, lonely, and empty.  Contrast this with two other spaces of immense size that do not feel empty.  The feeling in the warehouse isn’t one of size, but of loss.

Looking upon the face of this beautiful person, even though the meeting occurs in my mind, I am acutely aware of the sense of loss.  But it is a pain and a pain is a feeling.  So I will hold onto this beautiful ache and hope for more.

I wish that I could have a broken heart.

If God Was Dead Then Everything Would Be Permitted

Much of the debate on the role of religion in our country’s laws contain a cluster of associated ideas.  It is enthusiastically asserted by some that if God was dead then everything would be permitted. While it cannot be adequately stated what this sentiment means for everyone who utters it, for some it may very well be an utterance of fear, others an odd argument for the existence of God, etc…, for our purpose here we’ll start with that it appears to be a vocalization of one’s belief in that morality is essentially rule-based.  Where there are rules there are rule givers and without God present we would not have any adequate rules, nor likely any rules at all.  Contrary to helping us in our moral understanding, a reliance upon a belief in God actually hinders our moral development.

First the question of God, for it is not proven that God exists, and it isn’t possible to prove a negative, that God does not exist, which isn’t a burden for the atheist at all to embark upon.  The problem with the statement is the word “if” (as it is used today), which seems to presuppose that God does exist.  Another presupposition of the statement is that we do indeed have a sense of morality today.  It is therefor framed for the atheist to determine how we could define our current state of 1: God exists, 2: we have morality, without one of its defining characteristics.  There are a number of answers to this, two of which we will employ here.  First is to rewrite the premises as 1: There is no God, and 2: we have morality.  The existence of morality itself is counter to the notion that everything is permitted.  In plain terms the atheist says ‘there isn’t a god and we have morality, why bring God up?”

The second concern here is the assumption as to the need for a God.  There are a variety of reasons within this, and within this I’ll look at two.  The concern here is with the part of the phrase which states everything is permitted.  Firstly, it appears to mean that, without any ultimate authority on right and wrong action, then there will be nothing to distinguish the two from each other.  Without distinctions then all morality ceases and everything is permitted.  Arguments along these lines can be seen in answers from Aquinas and C.S. Lewis in that it through the perfection of God that we finite beings, with imperfect minds, are given insight and direction as to what is the good.  The good is one of the attributes of the perfection of God.  Without God from where is there a good?  Without the good then labels of good and bad become arbitrary, any system is just as good as any other system, and anything is permitted.

Secondly, there is the Hobbesian need for the judging authority to preside.  This itself has two aspects to it.  It can be thought that the original state of Nature is, as one philosophy professor at PSU has stated, like Danny Devito, short, nasty, and brutish, and for which there is a need to have an ultimate authority to keep everyone in line.  Supposing that our morality, without God, is arbitrary in its delineation, then there would be wide disagreements as to what laws are better, higher, more ‘just’ (if justice could exist without God) and we would have chaos.  God, being the ultimate authority, would be to that which everything is referred to in arbitration.  If God did not exist then we would have to invent God, it is sometimes said.

On this need for God it is problematic on a number of fronts.  There is widespread belief in God today which does nothing to lessen the disagreement as to what is right or wrong.  For one, there is nothing at all approaching consensus as to what the nature of God is or is not, as exemplified by Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion where the premise there is a God is accepted but which nothing can be known about.  This widespread disagreement in application of morality with the supposed existence of a God is problematic.  Yet this is answered by the need for the judgement to occur in a supposed afterlife.  This belief itself has two functions; first, it is beyond reproach (you cannot not prove the afterlife) and secondly, as such it is useful by the use of fear in controlling the populace (in much the way of Hobbes’ Leviathan with a spiritual twist).

One damaging assertion to those who maintain a need for God in our current morality is that they drop their particular religious affiliation and for them to take up another.  For example, for a Christian to instead become Muslim, or vice versus.  The similarities between the two are more than than their dissimilarities.  The basic actions of a good person are really the same thing.  And in both God functions as the ultimate authority, a final judge, and the wicked are punished.  The requirements of satisfying reciprocity, an ultimate authority, and a universal are all met.  Therefore, everyone in the world ought to convert to Islam (or Christianity, or whatever) and the matter is settled.  That this is violently offensive to the sensibilities of many people, that anger and hostile reactions instantly arise, that violence is perpetuated between these similarities is proof enough that these underlying reasons are not truly the reason why one might argue for the position of God as the ultimate judge of morality.  What is really meant is that my God is  the ultimate judge, and your God is a falsehood, which we see everywhere around us today, the atheist would point out. If the need for a spiritual Leviathan were the true need, then any Leviathan that fulfilled the job requirements would work. This is obviously not the case, so we can drop this argument as sophistry intended to distract us from the real concern, and that is the conformity of others (others meaning ‘those different’ or ‘those outside of a social group) and the lessening of of angst which is derived from the condition of ‘other’.

The counter to this is to reaffirm the point earlier stated that is through our understanding, or rather being influenced by God, that we come to know what is right or wrong.  God informs us through revelation of sorts of what is good and bad, right or wrong, just and unjust, and so on.  There are disagreements between what God is said to be, which is a poor argument against there being a God.  If we all have different answers to the question what is 1 + 1? it would not change the fact there is a correct answer (2).  Likewise, because there are different answers as to what God is does not change the fact that there is a correct answer.  Understanding this correct answer to what God is will inform us in our morality.  Any angst that is felt toward the other is rightfully done so, for the other is one not touched by God, that is not informed with God as moral compass, and to which we can be rightfully distrustful of.  Were they to be truly touched by God there would be no other and there would be agreement upon morality.

At this point the matter becomes one as to the proof of God and the nature of such, which sidetracks us from our immediate concern.  However, such a question is important in asking of what use is God in morality?  The premise that God is that which guides us in our morality, that is that which gives us a sense of what morality is, such as argued by Aquinas, is problematic.  It does not prove the existence of God but relies upon such, and if it is given that God exists it is explanatory but not necessarily prescriptive in that it tells us anything about what is the good.  Aquinas wrote from a Christian perspective with an emphasis on love and other Christian virtues.  Yet what if one were to take his arguments and substitute Hume’s vegetative or generative nature of God, or perhaps a war-like God, such as Thor, into the equation.  It is common that at this irrational part of faith that the believer is asked to turn away and to make a blind leap of faith.  If we have knowledge of something before hand it cannot be described as blind faith, and if we are in the condition necessary for a blind leap then we are not in a position to truly judge between arbitrary religions.  All that is had is the emotionally based proclamtions of the religious follower as to the feelings that they enjoy as they walk with God.  It becomes problematic immediately when one considers that there is no shortage of devout followers of nearly every sect, religion, belief, idea, group, or inclination.  We suddenly find ourselves back at the earlier problem of the arbitrariness of determining the good that is supposedly guided by God.

God as rule giver is therefor a primary problem in the modern moral discourse.  God does not exist (or cannot be proved one way or another).  Whether God exists or not is beside the point for there isn’t anything to which it has been shown that can be the ultimate arbitrator in matters of morality.  Whether this is God, or a Law of Nature (which such an informed morality might entail the strong eating the weak, a predator/prey relationship), or something else is of no use to us.  In all of these systems, God included, everything is permitted precisely because everything that can be imagined can be attributed to an imagined system of ethics.  Put in another way, it is like describing the laws of physics in an alternate, hypothetical universe that is different than ours.  Without anything real to hang a hat on, without anything to show empirically, there is no basis for anything else to be known and everyone brings their idea of an alternate universe to the table with fervent belief that they know one true way.  It rarely occurs to some that there is no such thing as one true way but that there are multiple answers.  As the saying goees, theres more than one way to skin a cat, and skinning cats is not as messy as the day-to-day lives of humanity.

What we do know is that we are capable of making choices based on our ability to rationalize.  We are capable of being rational agents, some would argue, and as such we ought to approach morality as such.  Whether it is Kant’s search for a Categorical Imperative, or Rawl’s position of ignorance, or a host of other methods,  we can better begin to approach morality.  It might be argued that there is still widespread disagreement and angst.  It is as unlikely that a Marxist would adopt the philosophy of Ayn Rand out of a concern for order and common morality as it is a Muslim or Christian to change their stripes and among adherents of Marxism and Capitalism we find the same religious, dogmatic zealots.  We would do well to remember that one cannot truly judge a religion by the actions of some of its adherents.  If this agreed, then we can look directly at the claims of religion as lacking, and ignore the idiocies of political activists in the merits of an ethical system.  However, with religion the ultimate definition of good is unknowable, and with the philosophy we at least have some starting point to work from, human beings in this world using our attributes of rationality and others, such as emotion, self preservation, etc… which can all be ascertained through empirical observation, more than can be said to any supposed characteristics of a supposed deity(s).

Returning to the opening statement, we can apply empirical methods of observation to the world around us.  It seems clear that there is a lot of self interest, as well as feelings of altruism, a need for reciprocity, a positive regard for those we admire, and other values and conditions.  It also seems unavoidable that everyone lives without contact with anyone else.  That is, a person does not live in a vacuum, and the close proximity of which requires some agreed upon rules of conduct, such as ‘take your trash out on wednesday’ and ‘drive on the right side of the road’.  There is no necessity for a God for such rules to be devised.  Human beings, it seems, are quite capable of devising rules themselves.  Concerning other matters of morality, for example the wide spread use of meth and other destructive drugs, is this an issue that needs a God to determine if it is harmful or helpful to a person’s life?  What rational person can defend the use of meth as anything but destructive?  Concerning murder, thou shall not kill, again is God necessary in this black/white case of morality?  Is a person’s answer to why they do not commit murder truly to rely on a fear of an afterlife judgement?  Such is the mark of truly poor character, not a good person, but a criminal who has yet to break a crime.  What sorts of things would this person commit if given the chance?  The answer is of no surprise to anyone who’s left the bright lights of society and had to make their way in the back alleys of life.  It is quite possible that a grouping of people, a community, a society, come to the consensus that killing one another is detrimental to their stability (or that in some instances the killing of people is a stabilizing force) and will be dealt with by the force necessary to instill such a respect among its citizenry.  This is not a comforting idea to the mind used to believing in a father-figure God.  It is realization that the world is dangerous, not fair, and that the good suffer while the bad succeed.  Yet this is a vital step to take in the maturing process, a lesson that every child needs to learn, and that we as a society, as a race, needs to learn.  It is time we put down our linus blanket and take an honest assessment at or place in the world and the tools we have to live.

God is neither necessary for morality or our understanding of it, and such a concept may even hinder our development and application of morality.  It is more profitable to rest our system of morality, our laws, upon empirical evidence and rational thought.  The original statement is better suited to read everything is possible, it is up to humans to determine which ones we will permit.

 

Berkeley and Bagels

Berkeley and Bagels

Sitting one night at a community coffee shop, re-reading once more the Introduction to Berkley’s Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, I was interrupted by a friend named Ellie who inquired as to the subject matter of the book.  I informed her that was it was a book whereas the author claims that matter does not exist, that things exist only when perceived, and that it made clear everything.  The skeptic in me had been quieted and I could go about my life, secure in the knowledge of how things are, devoting myself to more timely pursuits.  I also recommended the coffee.  Ellie, it seemed, was not convinced.

Ellie: What are you getting on about?  Have you lost your marbles?

Eddie: Not at all.  I’ll start from the beginning.  What is that you are holding in your hand?

Ellie: A bagel.

Eddie: How do you know that it is there?

Ellie: Have you stopped at the pub on the way here?

Eddie: No really.  How do you know that what you hold in your hand is actually there?

Ellie: Duh.  I can feel it in my hand.

Eddie: Right.  And if you were to move your nose closer to it you’d smell it also.  And you can also see it with your eyes.

Ellie: So the bagel exists.  I guess it’s a thinking bagel if it exist.  Right?  Get it?  Descartes?  Sorry… a poor joke.

Eddie: Quite.  We’ve established that this bagel exists because you can see it, smell it, feel it, and soon you’ll taste it.

Ellie: That’s the plan.

Eddie: Yet can you tell me about the bagel that is on the roof?

Ellie: What bagel on the roof?

Eddie: Exactly.  We don’t know if there is or is not a bagel on the roof because it is not perceived by our senses.

Ellie: This sounds like that cat in a box.

Eddie: I’m not going there, mainly because I never understood that.  However, bear with me for a moment.  How do we know that the bagel is here?  Senses.

Ellie: So what.  This bagel isn’t going to disappear if I no longer perceive it.

Eddie: Well yes and no.  We seem to experience a permanency of things in the world around us.  The desk in your room when you entered appears to be the same as when you left.  Yet the bagel would disappear if it were not perceived by something, because perceiving is a thought, and thoughts occur within thinking things.  I think Berkley would say that the larger thinking thing keeping everything in place while we are not looking at them would be God.

Ellie: Okay, wait.  You lost me.  What did you mean when you said that the bagel would disappear if it were not perceived because perceiving is a thought.

Eddie: It has to do with abstract ideas.  Tell me, what is a sensory experience?

Ellie: You mean the five senses?  Touch, taste, smell, feel, hear.

Eddie: Yes, they are that, but they are impressions, thoughts, or happenings in the mind.  Let’s do a psychology test.  You’re familiar with JND, just noticeable differences right?

Ellie: Yes.  Thats when slight changes in something are made until the person being tested notices a difference.  Those thresholds are measured and vary according to a variety of factors.

Eddie: Fine.  Now suppose that we blindfold you and I take a small pin out and slowly move it toward your finger and await until you tell me that you feel it.  Until you actually feel the pin, it hasn’t touched you yet, correct?

Ellie: Okay.  But what if you are poking me on a less sensitive patch of skin?  Perhaps it would take more pressure for me to feel it than in other areas, though in all you are actually touching me with the pin.

Eddie: But how would we know if I were indeed touching you?

Ellie: You could use a magnifying glass to look closely.

Eddie: All of which supports my point.  We know nothing unless it is perceived.  Yet this just begins to get to the heart of the matter.

Ellie: Which is?

Eddie: Abstract ideas are impossible.  In knowing whether the pin touched you or not we relied upon some sort of sensory data to inform us that it was so.  Berkley writes that we cannot abstract an idea from a perception, and since perceptions are all ideas, we cannot separate an idea from an idea.  Can you imagine the pin touching you without thinking about it touching you?

Ellie: Wait.  You just made me choke on my bagel.  What do you mean think about something without thinking of something?  That’s absurd.

Eddie: Exactly.  We cannot think of something without having a thought about it.  Go ahead and try to think of the pin touching you without any sensory idea of it.

Ellie: That’s cheap.  You’re telling me that I’m not to imagine the thing I’m told to imagine.

Eddie: It isn’t cheap.  Its a contradiction.

Ellie: Wait a minute.  I’m going to need a lot more espresso if I’m going to keep up with this foolishness.

Eddie: Grab some for me also.

Ellie: Okay.  Let’s leave the pin prick and go to something else because I am finding it impossible to think of something and not so at the same time.  Let’s instead talk about bagels.  Is this a bagel?

Eddie: Though it looks a little different than the bagel you had before, I would say that it is a bagel.

Ellie: Why is that?

Eddie: Because it seems to fit a set of objects that fit within the classification of bagel as I understand it.

Ellie: This set of the word bagel, is there a particular bagel that it refers to?

Eddie: No.  The placeholder for the set, ‘bagel’, is a general term.  It refers to all of them but yet none of them specifically of itself.

Ellie: Is there an archetypal bagel?  Or perhaps a form for bagels?

Eddie: I don’t know about forms… never did understand Plato.  Yet no, there is no archetypal bagel that exists anywhere.  The term bagel acts as a general term to which anything resembling a bagel, as understood as such, might be referred by the term.

Ellie: So there is something that we can imagine and yet doesn’t exist.  The abstract idea of a bagel works. There are abstract ideas.

Eddie: Wait a minute.  The placeholder term bagel is a general term that refers to many particular things, but this isn’t to say that it is an abstract thought.  Suppose the only bagels you ever knew of were in this cafe.  Made and sold here.  Nobody outside of this shop makes bagels.  There are twelve varieties of bagel in the display case and constitutes our set of of the term bagel.

Ellie: I could imagine a thirteenth variety.

Eddie: You could.  Yet you’d be thinking of thoughts that are instances of combinations of things known.  You’d just be putting together possibilities, thoughts, but nothing abstract.  At the dawn of human existence nobody said “someday someone will invent the wheel” because at the time he did so it was invented.  The concept of a wheel is a thought, just like seeing one when he made it.  Likewise, the concept of a novel bagel is a thought, the same as perceiving a bagel is a thought.  Yet back to the point.  Suppose you went to another country and visited a coffee shop there and within there were some new bagels, almost completely different but similar enough that you call them bagels.  Your set has enlarged with more particulars.

Ellie: The point?

Eddie: The point is that wide variety of things generally referred to by the term bagel was increased, not some abstract notion of bagelness that is separate from descriptions of bagels.

Ellie: But wait, what if I want to use this notion of a bagelness.

Eddie: Okay.  Go ahead.  Tell me about it, what constitutes bagelness?

Ellie: Doughy, slightly tough on the outside, chewy on the inside, made with wheat, or perhaps barley, or rye, baked in a oven, and…

Eddie: You are describing perception ideas to me but not an abstract thought.  You’ve told me nothing about bagels that is not discerned from looking at a lot of particular bagels, and those qualities being sensory perceptions on top of that.

Ellie: So what, you want me to give you some sort of understanding of a bagel without any sensory description words?  What, a vulcan mind-meld like in Star Trek?

Eddie: That would be quite a trick if it were possible.  Since it isn’t it isn’t worth wondering about as it is one more example of how supposed abstract ideas can lead us astray.

Ellie: Okay.  Hold on.  You were pretty angry at some election results recently, going on and on about justice and civic duty.  Justice is a thing that exists and yet we can’t smell it or taste it.  Justice isn’t a bagel in a case.

Eddie: So what is justice?

Ellie: It is the quality of being fair and reasonable.  That’s what the dictionary says.

Eddie: Nice definition.  Now every argument about justice, from Socrates to Mill has been settled.  I’m sure that we’d all agree we want a just world and that the U.N. would benefit from your definition.

Ellie: Don’t make me throw a bagel at you!

Eddie: Sorry, not trying to be mean, just making a point.  Your definition doesn’t help us know what justice is and isn’t.  It sounds good, but then there are a lot of messy situations in life where it becomes quite hard to determine if something is just or not.  There is a heated argument four tables down on the war in Iraq where one side says it American actions there are a just cause, and the other side saying the war is never just.  Who is correct?

Ellie: Well, I’d know it when I see it.

Eddie: You know you just said…

Ellie: I know, I know.  But there must be justice in the world.  Right?

Eddie: I don’t know what Berkeley’s opinion is on Justice.  However, perhaps we can better understand if we return to bagels.  You see those baked goods in the window to your left?

Ellie: You mean the donuts?

Eddie: I say that they are bagels.

Ellie: Now you’re just trying to pick a fight.

Eddie: No, I’m trying to show the arbitrary nature of language.  The term bagel is a placeholder term denoting a set of particulars.  There isn’t any abstract bagel property independent of thought that latches onto bagels because there isn’t any bagel independent of being perceived.  There is a term we use to generally denote meaning toward things we commonly understand as bagels.  We both disagree that that particular pastry is a bagel or not.   Our discussion of whether that is a bagel or not would then likely continue along the lines of comparing various similarities and dissimilarities of particulars within and without the set commonly understood as bagel.  The term bagel itself is gibberish without the particulars.  We could easily change our placeholder term from bagel to gabel instead and it would be okay.

Ellie: So there is no justice other than what we all agree as that being within the set of particulars we all agree as being justice?  That isn’t particularly comforting.  But surely we can see a novel action and determine whether it is just or not.

Eddie: Can we determine if something novel is round or not?

Ellie: Yes.  Round could be said to be a universal to which we refer to in determining if something is round or not.

Eddie: I think there might be something in the talk about universals, particularly if we look at whether or not ‘same’ and ‘different’ are universals.  But I don’t want to get sidetracked.  Going back to our earlier point, can you judge something to be round without perceiving it to be round?

Ellie: Are we back there again?

Eddie: I’m afraid so.

Ellie: So if I’m to understand you correctly, we only have ideas.  Our senses are all ideas.  If there is no sensing thing, whether it be brain or spirit or soul or whatever, then there is no perception, and then nothing.  Otherwise, how’d you know it?

Eddie: Right.

Ellie: And to abstract a thought is to have a thought about something in which I cannot see or feel or sense it in any way.

Eddie: As far as I’ve understood the Introduction. I’ve to tell you… I’ve read this thing several times and had much coffee.

Ellie: And you’re sure that an abstract thought cannot be a something else?

Eddie: What would that something else be?  Something separated from sensory description?  How would you describe it?

Ellie: With a lot more coffee, that’s for sure.

Eddie: You cannot say X and not-X at the same time.

Ellie: What?

Eddie: You cannot say that is coffee and that is not coffee at the same time.  It is a contradiction.  Likewise you cannot say that you can imagine a thought about something without using thoughts (senses) about it.  That too is a contradiction.

Ellie: Why are you reading this book again?  Did you lose a bet?

Eddie: For class.  And also because when I got to Berkeley’s position on there being material substance he called it an abstraction and dismissed it as such.  Because this belief was a contradiction, it couldn’t exist, which meant that everything wasn’t material substance but the substance of the thing we do have…

Ellie: Bagels.

Eddie: Funny.  No… perceptions are by thinking things… perceptions are thoughts… and since things cannot be material substance they must be of the substance of thoughts.

Ellie: So what of this bagel?  Did I create it?

Eddie: No.  God created it.  You, me, the bagel, everything, are all thoughts in the mind of God.

Ellie: Well you’d think that God would be able to make tastier bagels.

 

Berkeley’s thought experiment was summarized in a limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply:

There was a young man who said “God

Must find it exceedingly odd

To think that the tree

Should continue to be

When there’s no one about in the quad.”

“Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;

I am always about in the quad.

And that’s why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

confrontation

Because of a current job with the National Guard I wear my uniform every day.  At least until October 30 when our funding is cut and I’ll be out of a job again.  At the same time I am attending Portland State for my last three classes for my degree in philosophy.  So it is that I attend what classes I may, baring any other commitments, wearing my uniform.  I’ve heard some veterans say that the campus, being a typical college campus and leaning to the liberal side of things is unfriendly to the military.  I’ve not found this to be true.  There are some people who might give me an odd look.  This is to be expected and I welcome a dialogue with them.  I walk by the tables with signs on it denouncing capitalism and other things where the staffers that table are trying to spread their message.  So far none has attempted to say a word to me as I walk by.  It might surprise them to know that I share more of their beliefs than they might first guess.  However, while attending a conservative political training event for campus activists we were told that if you doing an event or table you want to avoid the obvious opponents to your message.  The point isn’t on debate as it is conversion.  You will not convert the base of the opposite camp.  Trying to do so will be a waste of time and energy.  Strength lies in having either the majority of opinion, or the belief of the majority.  This is what makes politics so distasteful to me in that it equate truth with numbers.  A majority of opinion does not mean a greater truth.  If I must explain this I’ll simply point you to history books.  And so it seems that the liberal staffers of this table have learned the same lesson.  They view a uniformed soldier as an obvious opponent to their anti Capitalist position and so they do not approach me.  Truth is, I’ve a copy of a socialist newspaper in my bag and would attend meetings on campus were I not in uniform.  It is no more acceptable for me to be at a socialist meeting in uniform than it is for me to be at a republican, democrat, or any other political meeting in uniform.  My political actions must always be separate from my military identity.  Many do not understand this, but the military in this country must be apolitical as much as possible.

I was walking across campus to my first class and a student walked over to me and stuck out his hand and said ‘thanks for your service’.  I always thank those that stop to thank me.  Further down, someone yelled out from the cigarette station ‘thank you’.  This particular day I must have gotten four ‘thank yous’.  It has been two weeks of going to classes and I thought back over all the reaction that I’ve noticed.  Because I wear the uniform I do not do many of the things that I might normally do.  I do not do funny movements, weird behavior out of fun, obscene jokes, and any other things to give the uniform a bad image.  I try to maintain military bearing in some respect while also portraying someone who is generally in a good mood.  I’m not trying to intimidate anyone.

I was walking between some buildings and was on my way to my second class when I looked to my left and noticed a hand less than 10 inches from my face, flipping me off.  A man walking a dog had passed me on my left (I had noticed he was passing by me by the sound earlier, noted it and shifted my observation elsewhere.  When my mind registered what was in front of me, this guy holding his arm straight out to his right and behind him, in my face, flipping me off, I knocked his hand back.  I might have yelled something at him, don’t remember, but I did ask him what his problem was.  He said something like “I did more than you” and continued to walk.  I was where I needed to go, watched him walk away, and I wanted blood.  I was in an odd spot of wearing the uniform and trying to figure out, as angry as I was, what to do to keep my bearing and to also give the message that I wasn’t to be walked all over.  I went up to him and pulled out my phone and I started recording him.  He hid his face, wouldn’t face me, and I grilled him on what his problem was with me?  He didn’t want to talk and tried to avoid me, tried feebly to bait me into a physical confrontation (which deep down inside I really wanted but decided against).  I followed him for two blocks, yelling loudly at him what part of him putting his hand in my face was acceptable?  What was he against?  What was his theory?  What purpose was it for?  He wanted none of it and kept going.  Students were watching me and some came running to me saying that campus security had been called.  I told them “good, let them come”.  The man with the dog kept going and I turned and went to the campus security office.  There I met the head guy, told him I was turning myself in, in case there were reports of some mad veteran on a rampage.  No reports were made.  I explained what happened and said that this was a testament to my therapy, as two years ago I might not have been to control myself and would have likely broken something on this guy.

Walking back through the park blocks on my way to class I was hailed by a student who was prior Army.  He just saw a uniform and wanted to come talk.  As we walked and talked, the man with the dog was walking back through the park and stopped ten feet in front of me.  We faced each other.  In very clear language I told the man ‘you don’t want anything to do with me right now.  Leave me alone”.  He said something and I interrupted him, saying “you don’t want any of me right now… leave me alone”.  He said that he was prior Navy Seal in the early 90s and asked if I was really in the service.  Nothing about my uniform appearance, my bearing, my haircut, anything says ‘fake’.  When I am out of uniform people ask me if I am military.  I chided him (angry as I still was) over his attacking people in uniform out of the blue.  If he was really a seal, what the hell was he thinking just messing with me like that?  What was his problem.  We parted, I told him I hoped he has a good day, and me and the prior army guy walked off.  He hadn’t seen the original confrontation and I brought him up to speed.  But he was now on edge judging from the body posture he saw between the man with the dog and me.  We talked about the man with the dog and I started to think about him.  My anger was dissipating out of me quicker now, being replaced by concern.  Was he a prior S.E.A.L.?  If so, what was going on with him to cause him to act like that toward me to begin with?  What did he need from me?  His behavior was of someone troubled over something and I had an urge to run back to him and inquire what could be done for him.  But now I was late for class that I’d already missed twice this week due to other engagements.  And I was still a bit angry.

Looking back at it now I see that I did some positive things.  I wanted to hurt the guy at the first moment.  Instead I tried to make him uncomfortable without touching him.  Hence the video (which I still have but will not post).  But I did not act in harmony.  To borrow from Aikido, I did not foster an uke nage relationship.  I was out of balance, not in harmony.  This was, as everything else around me (as O Sensei would tell me) an opportunity to practice.  The mat of Aikido is not only in the dojo but in the world.  I could have done much better in my initial reaction.  I do not rule out the possibility of striking a person (I am no pacifist and being in harmony does not mean never striking back).  It is that this was my first desire and instead of acting out of harmony I simply tried to tone down the strike.

I shall have to meditate and find my balance and hope for another encounter with him so that I might ascertain the true nature of him and his needs and that I might act more in harmony with them.

Back to politics.  It is a problem that if you get caught up in politics you start playing the game… and it is a zero sum game.  Even the side of compassion, of respect for diversity, has no compassion or respect for the opposition.  In our own political games it is the two sides of the chess board.  You cannot play a game of chess collaboratively.  There is no uke nage relationship in our politics.

Be Prepared

A couple of weeks ago some good friends of mine got married and several friends that witnessed the wedding camped out.  That night I had the opportunity to pull some things out of my truck and received a little poking fun of for my being prepared.  I laughed it off but noted that the people that made light humor of it were happy to have the materials I provided.  I put it on my to-do list to restock my truck kit.

Tonight I was driving home.  I had left a bar from downtown Portland and hit I-5 headed north.  I was almost to the Rose Center past the Morrison Street Bridge and I saw some hazard lights blinking on the side of the road.  I pulled over as I usually do.  Inside was a young woman, 23?, with two toddlers and a baby.  She had run out of gas and had no cell phone and did not have a gas can, nobody looking for her, and was driving to an area twenty miles north.  I put out two flares behind the vehicle and went to buy a gas can and some gas.  What is more is that my military pay, which was every two weeks, had for some reason switched over to a three week gap and pay day was the next day.  I had been aggressively paying off and catching up on late bills accrued over the past month, and all I had left was $20 in my wallet.  I was thankful that I had the cash available to be able to get this person a gas can and a gallon of gas.

Returning back I put the gas in and she made small talk.  I wished her well and went back to my truck and waited.  At this time a white truck pulled over.  It was painted with various flames and such.  I ran over to the truck and it had two latino men in it, one wearing a beanie cap, and they gave me a thumbs up sign asking if things were okay.  I told them that it was a gas issue and it was resolved.  They said okay and drove off.  The lady had told me she had been waiting on this busy highway in downtown Portland for well over an hour and not a single soul had stopped.  Aside from myself only two latino men stopped.  Those with racist stereotypes should keep score.

While they drove off I turned and watched her in the car and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I couldn’t leave until I had been assured of her vehicle moving.  It wasn’t.  She was moving throughout the car, sometimes a door wide-open and her legs sticking out past the white line of the the shoulder.  At one point I ran over to the car and closed the door a little while waving a chemlight around (I have several traditional kinds, and four battery operated kinds on string).  She was flabbergasted.  She could not find her car key.  She thinks her little boy had it.  Her car was a mess.  It looked like she was moving and was carrying lots of food stuffs, most of which were supposed to be refrigerated or kept cold and were now completely thawed.

I went back to my truck and quickly kicked myself for not having a flashlight.  I had forgotten that I had taken both of my lights out and put them in my pack for the Hood to Coast rally.  I mentally made a to-do to buy a truck only light and extra batteries.  But I had plenty of chem lights.  I had also noticed that my flares had died and so I went and replaced them with two fresh flares.  Using chem lights we searched the car, trunk, and underneath the car.  The car was a mess and filled with trash, rocks, bits of tree bark.  And with the spoiling food and a needed diaper change it wasn’t pleasant.  I gotta hand it to mom for keeping her cool.  She didn’t yell or put on a show of frustration.  She kept calm.  But something dawned on me… we were on an overpass and one of the little toddlers, who was making animal noises now, had the key at one time.  I asked her if he ever got close to the railing.  Was it at all possible for him to throw the key over the rail.  It was.  So I took a chemlight and ran down the highway to where I could exit the overpass and ran back to the spot beneath the car and searched the grass and mud with a blue chemlight.  I mentally upgraded the flashlight I was to get for the truck to a ‘big spotlight’.  After several minutes it seemed clear that was nothing here or the kid had an arm and really threw it far.  I ran back to the car.

I started searching the inside of the car, having grabbed an empty bag from my truck and we started putting trash in it.  I had run back to the truck to get my battery powered chemlights on string to twirl around, as my third set of flares had burned out now and I was out of them, to increase visibility.  People, if you see a car on the side of a narrow shoulder, do us a favor and drive into the opposite lane.  Seriously.  Otherwise I’m going to yell at you as you drive by.  I had forgotten, but quickly noticed, that at the ends of those battery chemlights were LED whitelights.  I ran back to the car to use this in the search when she popped up from behind the door showing me a single solitary ignition key.  She found it!

Rejoicing I packed my gear away into the truck and waited, again, for her to turn the car on and drive away.  And I waited some more.  Getting out I noticed that her car was making little clicking noises.  Her battery had died.  I hadn’t noted that her flashers went out earlier.  They were on bright when we started looking for the key, but now they were out.  It was a highway overpass, there was no room for me to safely turn my truck around for a closer engine to engine orientation to use a set of jumper cables.  However I remembered that I had two sets in my truck.  Yes… two.  I’ve been meaning to give one set to a friend for a while but kept forgetting.  So I backed the truck up as far as I could go and stretched them out.  Too short.  I remembered that in her trunk she had a set as well.  She was very frustrated now, her head leaned against the steering wheel.  I tried to make light of it by saying that if she chose to write a country western song this is good material.  She popped the trunk and I pulled out her set of cables and attached them to my two sets.  My two kits in my truck (ropes, bungee cords, blanket, flares, etc…) are kept in clear plastic craft boxes that fit neatly behind my seat and I can look inside without opening them.  But they are plastic.  The ground was wet and I needed insulation for the connections between the jumpers so I placed the plastic boxes onto the wet concrete and the connected alligator clips on top of them.

“Okay, turn it over” I said.  Nothing.  Not a click, not nothing.  I checked all the connections, wiggled things around, and still nothing.  I reved the engine but didn’t think this was it as her car was smaller than my truck.  It would have no problem turning it over.  It was a simple problem… there was an ‘open’ in my circuit somewhere.  I looked at the set of cables she had.  They looked old and crappy.  It had to be them.  I remembered that she had another set in her trunk still in the package (I could see them under some rocks).  I replaced her set with another, three sets of jumper cables lined out, and told her to turn it over.

Success!!  I disconnected them and gave her instructions on the nearest gas station and also told her not to turn her car off for a bit.  She as very and happy to be able to get back on the road.  It was now almost midnight and she’d been stranded for several hours now.  I let her pull out in front me me, assured that she was now really moving, and I continued on my way as well.

The entire time I I was saying to myself “I am happy that I am available to help this person out.  Thank you for letting me come across this person”.

23 days

A week ago I cleaned my apartment, somewhat, and left my apartment of the past four years. While I liked the people that ran it, liked the layout and the neighborhood, I hated the specific location. Situated on a major traffic artery running uphill, I heard every vehicle as the owners gassed the engines to make it up the steep climb. It was impossible to keep any windows open and watch t.v., nor to sit on the balcony and enjoy a summer night with a book. The constant noise was too much for me and though there was some anxiety about my leaving for the unknown, I was also happy to be leaving.

While I was cleaning my apartment, putting everything into a storage unit, I had an opportunity to drive to another county and give three lectures on domestic violence and the military. I wasn’t paid, but I was happy to be able to do so. Improving the lives of veterans is my mission. Because things have become harder for me right now hasn’t changed my mission. Drive on… draw fire… charlie mike.

The week prior to actually leaving I ran a million plans in my head, from camping out to just sleeping in the truck. I still had my two cats with me, had three large boxes with change of clothes and some essential books on anger, CBT, military psychology, my laptop, and a brand new litter box and cat food. I checked into a motel with a decent room for two days while I started a temporary two-week assignment with the Reintegration Team.

Monday morning I drove to a place that does work for the homeless, including veterans. I gave my PTSD presentation which is heavy on military culture and bridging understanding.

When I get a very lengthy, invasive, and painful to make background check, which takes weeks to do, I should be able to get on full time until the end of the fiscal year. Until then I was trying to find a place to stay where I could take my two cats with me. Yet after two days, with no clear answer in sight, I took my cats to a friend who was looking to adopt. Her house is beautiful inside, the dog was more well-behaved than most people I’ve met, and the cats actually did very well readjusting. There is also a large yard for them. I think that all four of them will be very happy. When the reality of things started to sink in, it wasn’t until I was hit with the notion of getting rid of my two cats that I was overcome with anxiety. Heavy breathing, shortness of breath, tunnel vision, and more all at the same time. But before long I had it under control by turning off my emotions. And as I took my cats to their new home, both crying in their boxes, I walked a fine line between trying to comfort them and trying to shut off my feelings.

The next day I checked out of my motel room and then drove to my temporary job and checked in. Then I drove to my other job where I help counsel veterans. When it was over I drove to the storage unit my belongings were put and I grabbed a stack of pillows, and changed in to civies. I had to do this before the gates closed for the night. Then I got into my truck and drove. Not knowing where to go I went to the armory and stayed in the parking lot. The same the next night, though I was awakened by someone training another driver in the parking lot at 2:30 AM for a hour. And so it continued for the week. I’d get up and change in the armory or a restroom at the storage unit, go to work for reintegration, and then pile up my pillows in the truck and go to sleep.

When Friday hit I decided to try camping on the beach on the river. While I did enjoy the beach for the afternoon, I changed my mind about staying overnight and drove back to town. This time I decided to try a dark parking lot behind a store that has been closed down for a couple of years. Within fifteen minutes a Tigard police officer drove up and questioned me. He was cautious, telling me not to reach for things unless told to do so, and inquired why I was there. My story of “just trying to find a place to sleep” fit as my truck had various boxes and a stack of clothes in it. I told him that my military training schedule made me less desirable for work with a company, that this loss of income caused me to lose my apartment, and I was between places at the moment. He asked me if I was a veteran, and as he did so I could see a wave of regret and pity wash over his face for a split second. That emotion reflected back onto me. Being in the presence of this felt worse than anything else I had felt so far.

A few weeks earlier I had been asked to be a motivational speaker for a homeless veterans picnic. I remember lamenting that I couldn’t do enough for them, that I didn’t understand them enough to truly speak to them. I was told to not be negative, but positive. I spoke about my admiration for them, of how they answered the call of their country, how it was an honor to be counted among them as veteran. Whether I drag this experience out or not, consciously or unconsciously, it has proven valuable to me in giving me insight. My admiration for those homeless veterans was real and it has increased.

The police officer told me that I could not stay, that I had to go somewhere else and he recommended the rest stop down the highway past Wilsonville. I did’t want to make the drive, nor stay in such a busy place, but I did it. Getting there around midnight I found a shadowy spot and put up blankets in my windows to block light. In the park-like setting before me I saw many shadows of men moving to and fro. This was a meeting ground for various activities, including sex and drugs. I did not rest well that night as part of my threat radar stayed on, my pistol was ready beneath me, a flashlight for blinding was beside me. The next morning, amid sounds of semis cranking up and driving off, I sat for a while and let my aching body and cloudy mind adjust. I watched as two men from different cars made their way to a rendezvous in some hidden place. Apparently behavior that occurs near midnight occurs in the daylight as well.

I drove to a Borders books that I’ve been frequenting for the past week at night. The mornings found me going to a Starbucks to do online work for one job before reporting to another job, and then going to a Borders after work to continue. One thing was that I simply wanted a place to go. Today, as yesterday, I find that I can easily spend several hours in a coffee shop because I have nowhere else to go. I have work to do, however, and I spend some of my time working on a presentation (I have one tomorrow afternoon) or doing work for a study I am involved with. Late this afternoon I go to a friend’s house to do laundry. I’ve not asked about a shower yet… I’ll likely take one in the armory early tomorrow morning. If I can get a shower every two or three days I will be okay.

As far as another place to live, I’ve found one. Before moving out I had a place lined up, ish. Because of the job and such I’ve no savings left. What savings I did have, all $2000 of it, was wiped out by a cluster between financial aid, PSU, and benefits last summer. This new place, however, didn’t work out. The person checked emails infrequently and quit responding to my emails altogether. I had been counting on this and was this that had me get a hotel room. If I knew she was going to back out on me I’d never taken the hotel room and saved myself the $130. Lesson learned. Since then I’ve put out an ad on craigslist, emailed other ads, and so on, and eventually got a good hit for a place in North Portland. Wasn’t too thrilled about moving to NOPO as it is a drive through traffic for most of my jobs. Yet I was looking for anything that fit me. There were options here and there, but they all had the feeling about it as though I were a bum crashing on someone’s couch. Even some of the places where I could rent a room had this feeling about it. I’d rather camp out than be that. The place that I checked out is three single women living in a 4 bedroom apartment. There are also two dogs living there that seemed to like me (and I them). Yesterday I got the word that I can move in on the 1st. I am looking forward to it. I get along with women better than men. I am more comfortable with them and in return they’ll get a marine guard dog living with them. Don’t break into this house or I will bite.

I have another week to go before I can move in. Last night I went by my old apartment and checked it. I still have a key and, it being late at night and knowing that it will take a while before maintenance has cleaned/painted/recarpeted the place, I took two pillows and a towel and slept on the floor. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor, but what I hated was that I did not have the fan that I used to have. Because of this I could hear the downstairs neighbor snore loudly, and the sound of traffic was quite intrusive. I put some headphones on to some ocean wave sounds and finally drifted asleep after almost two hours of tossing around. When the morning came I left before any maintenance crews came around. I’ll try to keep this up for the next week if possible. If I show up near midnight and leave around 0600 I should be outside the range of any activity that might find me out. When they change the locks I’ll just revert back to the truck.

Earlier I was looking for videos for a presentation I am giving. One of them is a Bill O’Reilly video talking about homeless veterans and it is accepted by everyone on the show that 90% of the homeless veterans have substance abuse and/or mental health issues. At one point Bill dismisses that more ought to be spent/done for the veterans because you’d have to drag them in against their will to get them help. There is a huge disconnect here. Bill doesn’t get it and were I to talk to him he wouldn’t try to listen to me at all. Dress up a lot of the programs around here as they currently are and I have interest in going to them. Even now I am not interested in any homeless shelter or program, or anything at all. I want nothing to do with them. I am accepting aid from some of them because they will give me a footing to continue upward. One is a loan to make a payment on rent. Because I’ve spent nearly a week sleeping in a truck does not make me an expert. Likewise, suppose I have a place to live and I decide to stay outside one night to see what it is like… this too paints a very incomplete picture. For me to get a better idea what its like I had to feel hopelessness for the future. I had no idea what was going to happen or how to really change it. Once I felt this for a brief instant I had a deeper understanding. Now I look at the homeless around me and wonder what it is like to live with this feeling day after day after day. How does one get out of this state then? Even when I was in this state I monitored my feelings toward things. Like when I was confronted by the police officer who showed pity on his face. What do I feel when I read about various programs, aid lines, shelters? A lot of the time I feel like staying away. They are not appealing at all to me because they reaffirm my weakness, my inability to take action. I am infantry and even though things suck for me at times, I stick my nose down and drive forward. What do I want? What do I need? I could use some laundry facilities and a shower! Does sleeping under a tree bother me? Hell no!

So I imagine a place that I’d feel comfortable in right now. I imagine a coffee shop. There are computers available for internet access (finding jobs, entertainment, etc…) as well as books to take/leave for free. Show a military card and get a free sandwich or coffee. On the site are showers that anyone can use. there are some lockers with a lock you check out from the front desk. They have a copy of a key. You can use a locker for an entire day. There are donations taken for the place. Basic coffee and sandwich is free but you can buy more expensive stuff. There are also sponsored talks and meetings places here. This helps to make this a place for not ONLY the homeless to go but which is open to/for the homeless to go. Because it isn’t viewed as a homeless place to go it is desireable to go there. Imagine if Starbucks had showers on site and gave free coffee. I’m sure I’d be there a lot.

I am looking forward to moving into a place where I can get settled into a routine again. I have a routine now but it isn’t very healthy. I need to eat better (now I live off of fast food and such) and better hygiene and also working out. I’ll miss the Portland Marathon this year as I couldn’t afford the entry fee before the deadline, nor can I afford the nutrition I need in order to train effectively before the race. I feel good. I am an optimist after all. This experience was needed to help me focus, learn, and grow. Right now I am hungry and will go find something to eat. I am very fortunate in that I have jobs right now and, though I’ll likely have overdrafts for a few days, I am not going hungry and have some income. I remember what being hungry was like from when I lived in Eugene, though at the time I did have a roof over my head.

****************

It has been a couple of days. I thought I was moving in to one place only to be told the next day that there was a miscommunication between two of the coordinators. The room was no longer available. I’ve continued to search and thus far I’ve found nothing acceptable. What I am doing now is not distressing enough for me to accept just anything that is thrown at me.

What is distressing, sort of, is my cats. I forget about them and then something will occur that reminds me of them. Just now I am conversing with a friend via IM on the computer and she asks where the two cats are at. I tell her they are at a new home. Her response is “I bet you miss them and they miss you! They brought you joy every time you came home. I remember that.”

That statement was like a sniper’s shot on an unsuspecting target. I found a wave of sadness rolling over me and I had to blink away my emotion, turn and stare out the window, and wait for the moment to pass. Focus on the mission. Drive on… draw fire. A minute later I am once again fine.

Tomorrow I have two meetings with possible roommates to see if they like me or not. Then the weekend will be upon me. The last few nights I’ve been sneaking into my old apartment. I still have a key and I know that the maintenance crew takes a long time in getting around to resetting an apartment. It is more comfortable to sleep on the floor than in the truck, though that isn’t too bad. I wait until late at night, when nobody will see me, and I quietly slip into the old apartment with three pillows, a beach towel, and my laptop. Should someone break into my truck because there seems to be a lot of stuff in the cab, I care really only about this laptop. With this I am able to continue my mission. I can lose a lot of things, but not this or my truck. These two make my mission much easier.

*********************

I just attended a meeting of various concerns within the medical community. I was there as a veteran’s voice.

Walking back to my truck on a beautiful summer afternoon on a deserted campus, I paused at a walkway overlooking a children’s home. Oustide in the backyard was a child playing basketball. I stopped and watched for a few minutes. Miraculously I was nolonger who I am, but the world’s troubles evaporated and my concern was no further than the boundaries of the yard and the bounce of the basketball. It was a sublime experience and my needs were so very simple. To have fun, enjoy this wonderful thing called ‘summer’, and to feel loved (as an older sibling was doing a good job of playing at a level for the much younger one).

I turned and left, meandering down the path to find my parked truck. I stopped for a moment under a tree and enjoyed the sight and smell of sunshine through a young oak tree. In the tree a jay was bouncing between branches. I was already aware and basking in the glow of a calm, contemplative beauty… a feeling of peace. But what was surprising to me was the wells of tears. I found that I had a small string hanging from the edge of my soul and that when I tugged at it for a little bit I could feel that it was connected to deeper, heavier strings integral to the tapestry of my heart. I could feel the physical sensation of some emotion, but I couldn’t feel it. I knew that I wanted to cry, but for the life of me I had no idea why. And it would have been very easy to take a lighter and burn that loose thread… but while it was confusing for me, I found it comforting at the same time… it was the oddest reminder that I still had emotions even though I am adept at shutting them off.

***********************

I went to a few places and looked at possible homes. I met some very nice people of whom I wouldn’t mind meeting again under difference circumstances. As odd as it sounds, though one person’s room was too small for my needs I have strange desire to go do yard work with her. She is attempting to reclaim her yard from overzealous blackberries. She a sweet pit bull who loved belly rubs and all manner of things were growing in various pots and containers and corners of the yard. I shall have to make contact with her again. Another person was working on her Ph.D. and, when I told stories of running down that very street as a hasher, she became interested. I’ve likely recruited her to going to a hash sometime. I would like to go again myself someday. Two more people work as social workers and were interesting. And on and on.

But thus far nothing has felt… I don’t know. I keep trying to put my finger on it, hoping that I’ll know it when I feel it. If I were going by purely rational decision processes I’d have already chosen a place. All I need is a roof and a cot. Yet I’ve got that now… well… not the cot… a floor with two towels as sheets. I’ve gotten a text from a friend and it seems like this might actually be a good opportunity for me. It has a better feeling to it. So I’m going to see.

I told various people about my state and I’ve had so many offers of places to crash or the like. I sit and I think about my friends, and there are really a lot… were I to list a few of them here I’d feel guilty for not listing all of them and I know I’d also forget some and I’d feel worse about that. But whether that person lives in Eugene, Bend, Portland, Gresham, Hillsboro, various places in Arkansas, Arizona, California, or moving to California, Ohio, Michigan… and on… I am blessed. Here are affirmations of my true worth and I am humbled by its loftiness.

I am not a good partner. I am often called brave. Of this I do not qualify. It is no bravery to raise arms in violence. It is bravery sometimes to not fight. This is not a plea for pacifism, for I am no pacifist and the dogma of the moral view behind it I find to be flawed at a deep and basic level. I speak merely of the outward appearance of bravery as some say it to be, physical acts. Were I truly a brave person I would have talked better, opened up more, listened more, with the amazing women that I’ve dated. As I’ve told every one of them… I do not date people of poor character. I’ve had the great fortune of dating some truly wonderful people. This is not a pity session against me, for something must be good about me in order for all of these women to date me. As one told me… ‘I felt truly loved by you in the beginning’. Yet I lock up. Cannot seem to make it past a few months. It shuts off. And, instead of communicating, I run. I do not act with any integrity or bravery… I act the coward. I will stand with my friends against an army even if it means my doom. Yet I cannot get close, truly close, to someone as a partner.

The room is dark. Now that the sun has fully set I am surrounded by darkness in this empty apartment. Only the glow of my monitor of my laptop. A friend texts me about her upcoming class and the syllabus she is preparing. The street that has been the thorn in my consciousness interupts me with its louds traffic. I recall reading a study on anxiety disorders and their listing peaceful areas without noise as good for healing. I thought of my own PTSD symptoms and how much I hated my street that I lived on. Looking back over the last five years I feel as though I’ve lived a dream, that I wasn’t truly present. I feel as though I am waking up and I realize how tired I was and how tired I am still.

As I was writing earlier. I’ve had lots of opportunities for places to stay and crash. I admit that part of my reason for not doing so is pride. Pride is also something very important to the military. To understand how to help veterans in any area one must understand our peculiar brand of pride. How much of the helpers who try to save us are like the misguided missonaries who go to distant lands to save/convert/subjugate a foreign people.

But I get off track. I spoke to a soldier who was in some need on the telephone. The soldier confided in me that it seemed that everything happened at once. I could hear desperation and worry in the voice. I was acting as the Staff Sergeant on the phone call and identified as such I might be seen as a symbol of one’s failing. Put it another way, you don’t go to the trainer and admit to failing, you try harder. So I confided the things that happend to me. I did not go into details. Sometimes when someone tries to empathize with you it is thinly veiled disguise of “I’ve got lots of problems too… listen to me!” That is not my need. I’ve got places/people I can call on for that (thank you all). This was about the soldier’s need and I was the help. I simply said that I had lost a job which caused me to lose my apartment and that I slept in my truck. And then I immediatley asked some more questions about the soldier’s. Perhaps it was just me, but I thought I sensed a little more give, more sharing of the soldier’s part. More ‘listened to’.

I was conversing with a friend earlier and I told her that I am not a smart person. I’ve been told since I was very young that I am very smart. Yet my grades do not support this. I was never an A student in grade school, nor high school. I was mid level in my Marine training for avionics and electrician schools. Took me a while to get the broader concepts of various avionics systems down… but then I became quite good at troubleshooting problems on the bird.

I told my friend that I am not a smart person. I get by. If I do any healing with people it is certainly not from any intelligence on my part. If I am able to give any healing it is beacuse I operate from my weakness and wounds. I read a passage like this from a book recently and it resonated very strongly with me. I saw myself in those passages. This is why my current state is a true blessing for me. I lament not my current state. It is inconvenient, but no more so than a multitude of stories around me every day. I have it easier than most. When I consider that I might be able to gain from this twenty four days (-ish) I consider myself given an opportunity, a gift. The question now is will I be able to use this gift adequately? How might I help other veterans more? What words might I use? What approach?

I offer my prayers to the gods. I’ve given it before and I offer it again. My life in service to the design. I pray that I have the courage to live it, though I always feel as though I am merely taking the first step on a path. I can rattle of names of people who’s love, dedication, strength, perseverance all humble me greatly. Were I to have one finger’s worth of their heart I could move mountains. These people are giants to me.

Gods above and below, of the moon and the sun, of the wild rain and the moist earth, of the dancing fire and the wandering breeze. I stray from the path every day. Thank you for your constant patience with me, your repeated gifts. I wish to be a force of healing. I offer my life, such as it is, to whatever this healing might be.

********************

I sit in the dark utterly grateful for my life. It is the most sublime happiness. The memory of contemplated suicide in the past seems as the greatest of waste of the most amazing occurence ever… I exist.

****************

It was 23 days of carrying getting by. It wasn’t hard at all. I had sunk into the usual rhythm that seemed to define more of my personality than I thought likely. A typical day for me was to get up at 0600 or I’d sleep in until 0630. I was sleeping in my truck but after the cop found me I decided to not do that anymore. I did not like the park setting, too much activity for me. So I snuck into my old apartment as I knew the maintenance crews would take several weeks to finally get to working on my old apartment. What I didn’t count on was new neighbors… neighbors who liked to keep their front door open, come in later in the night, and have lots of visitors in and out, and babysitters early in the morning. So my window for getting in and out, unseen, was small. I’d get up early, sneak out, and drive to a Starbucks. There I would do some work online until time to go the the armory when people were there to unlock it. Then I’d shave and dress and start my work day. At the end of the day I’d go to a coffee shop and hang out until late at night when I could sneak into the apartment… or I’d go straight to the apartment before anyone was home yet. Once inside I was stuck inside until time to leave in the morning.

I didn’t have a bed, slept on the floor with a beach towel under and on top of me. I carried a jug of water to hydrate. I lived off of eating fast food and coffee shops.

The sense of desperation that I was feeling had dissipated once I let my cats go to a new home. Now I was just focused on doing what needed to be done. If I was going to gain any better insight I would have to move outside into the forest. The thought did cross my mind. I seriously considered it but decided against it instead as I was too busy with various jobs. It seemed to me that a dry cot, a place to shave and shower, and perhaps a locker to store one’s goods, would go a very long way among veterans who are trying to get back on their feet. It seemed that with those things, and perhaps a monetary loan toward job seeking (printing resumes, clothes, food, etc…) and there wasn’t much that I couldn’t overcome.

I interviewed several houses. I started to just machine gun the process, checking out as many as I could. Just when I had a place lined up, sometimes getting a phone call that I was the one, It’d fall through two days later. It is funny how fast a day turns into a week. I got a text from a friend telling me that she was looking for a roommate in her house. I accepted instantly. I knew her and liked her, that’s the biggest half.

So now I am in a small room just big enough to put a bed and a small desk, drawers, and two boxes. There is not nearly enough room for me to bring all of my things over, so I leave them all in storage. I look at this like a six month long deployment but easier. I’ll give this place six months which should allow me to fully make the transition from the bar industry to mental health, get into grad school, and so on.

I’m good to go

So far I my experiences are proving useful for me. Again, I’ve had opportunities over the past week to redress some things. Yet part of me continues to stay in this limbo where I am at. It could very well be that I am using this as a rationalization for my stubborn pride. However, I am not the smartest person on the school bus. I cannot rattle off a dozen theories or formations of the mind or principles of thought. Yet, on occasion, I do well in working with other people. I’ve been blessed/honored to be in the presence of people who, while dealing with their emotional/physical ordeals, have found it possible to open up to me. Love is a central component of any healing therapy and it is easier to love others when you share something.

On another side, back to my not being the smartest, the world of theory out there is truly vast and one could easily get sidetracked on various trails of thought. It is as though you are in a canoe on a wide open lake. My experiences lend emotional signposts to my navigating. While I read various studies on anger, depression, substance abuse, cognition, PTSD, sexual trauma, combat experience, happiness, resiliency, etc… my emotional experiences keep me on track, or they pull me to other areas.

I am grateful for my experience. Others might lament it, and to be honest the stress does poke its head up from time to time. Yet for it to be valuable for me in the manner I just described, the stress must be present. If it doesn’t show itself then I can learn nothing, I am given no greater insight into the plight of veterans, my future work/research/writing/whatever in this field is hampered and the greater good that I so wish to do will be stunted.

Let it rain, let it pour, let the vengeful fates pull their hair and shriek. Were it only about myself I might not have the strength… for I am not a strong person. Yet when it comes to others I have great reserves within me as yet untapped.

Semper Fi

Resiliency

I’ve worked hard to get my degree. Not as hard as others, mind you. Whenever I begin to think that my working many hours at a job, going out of town on training exercises, and having to still do a paper for a class in the process is a lot and a little self misery starts to pop up… I’ll meet someone who goes to school, has a job, and has a better GPA than me (though that is not saying much). It brings me back to reality and to stop moping around, get back to it.

Another one of my traits is optimism. This works well for me when things are bad, but I’ve found that when things are going well I will not try to make them the best. I am thoroughly and exceptionally average.

I left Gustav’s. I hated that place. Of all the places that I’ve ever worked, this place ranks as the worst. There is not a single fiber of my being that is lead to believe that there is any care or concern for the employees. I hated working there and, though I needed the job, it was a welcomed change to leave. I started applying at different places and in less than a week I had several offers. I took the one that I thought would be the best, a sports themed restaurant that shows ALL the games. After a week of training we opened up the restaurant and even though we had 7 bartenders (3 too many) I quickly showed I was a good one. I was given a fair amount of shifts per week and things seemed to be going well.

Two weeks after opening the restaurant I had to leave for military training. All in all I missed 3 weeks at the restaurant. When I did come back and asked for shifts again, and was given 3 shifts, it started a big fight in the bar among the bartenders that have been working while I was gone. I was viewed, by them, as the new guy and they didn’t want to give up their shifts. I understand their concern. I volunteered to pick up shifts at other locations and thought I’d be transferred. However it did not work out as the new location only needed me for three shifts to cover for a vacationing bartender.

Back to square one.

I managed to get two shifts scheduled and pick up an extra one (not enough to pay the bills) but soon found myself telling the company that I was leaving again for two weeks training in South Carolina. This training was important for me to get and I seized the opportunity to get it. Bars often sell their jobs on the premise that the industry is flexible in staffing, unlike the rest of the world. Not entirely true.

When I came back from training I had no shifts for the next week. The week after, 1 shift. The week after that, zero and also the week after that. I had already been looking and applying for jobs but we were now in the Summer months in Oregon, a time that is notoriously bad for bar business. Our rushes occur later, business is down in many areas, and staff fight for diminishing shifts. I was now in a deep hole, behind on everything, and looking at unable to pay rent.

I applied for unemployment. I do work three other jobs, however they don’t support me. One is one weekend a month, the other two average two hours or so a week. I must have filled out a dozen different forms online, drove to the unemployment office to straighten out some discrepancies only to be handed a phone and waiting for twenty minutes to talk to someone on the other line who didn’t really ‘hear’ me and my situation.

I’ve still not received anything. When I gave up that I’ll get no shifts from the sports restaurant, I went in to collect my final paycheck and saw I was scheduled one shift. I worked it… and entire hour and a half. Tips were so low that I didn’t even bother splitting them with the ungrateful bartender working who is always angry with me coming in (I expect she is threatened by me, I don’t know) for shifts.

Meanwhile I keep looking for work. I went to a bar to apply, was 12th in line, and when I was interviewed they told me I knew answers that nobody else knew. I am a very good bartender. I know my stuff. They liked me, I knew they did. But then they noticed that I was in the National Guard and my having to go away for 1 out 4 weekends did not sit well with them. I did not get the job because of that.

When I first came back from my second round of training I was told to fill out paperwork for active duty orders that would allow me to travel around and help veterans. When I started the process I learned that it would take a couple of weeks. Now that I’ve learned that I need a ‘secret’ clearance on it, and I do not have one, I’ve learned that it might take a couple of months.

And rent is past due.

I went and rented a storage unit and spent the weekend packing everything up. While doing so I got an email asking if I could go give three lectures to some veterans. I would be happy to. During the moving process I’ve given five lectures on three different days.

People have asked me where I am going and when I tell them the various contingency plans that I have, some get concerned and I can read shock on their face. Sleep in a truck? A tent? Oh no! It is this that keeps me from telling most people that have asked me. I know that among the many friends and associates in my contact list that I have many options. I’ve had keys handed to me, offers for money, and so on. This is not a scary place for me. I’ve been through worse, purposefully and not. I have lots of things going for me, I am not doing bad, and I am not in despair. I am, after all is said and done, an optimist.

The despair comes from my two cats. Having two cats severely limits my options. It hinders movement, places to stay, costs, times, and everything. The thoughts of getting rid of my cats caused me great distress. All of the emotional connections I’ve found it impossible to create with people for any length of time are made with my cats. They’ve been my ‘kids’ and many nights have found us three piled up on a couch reading books or watching t.v.

However, things have come to a head. I’ve stayed in a hotel the last two days and will be leaving tomorrow. To gain more mobility I’ve opted to give my cats a good home. Far down in the sub reaches of someplace within I can feel a twinge of the great sense of loss that I know is there. But if I’ve learned to do one thing very well over the past twenty two years, it is to cut off my connections. I do this very well, at times without my wanting it to. This skill, used with my own mother and some relationships, was honed into a very formidable skill after Iraq.

So now it is that I do start another job (tomorrow). Tomorrow I also hope to finalize moving in to a near perfect place to live, but the timeline on this is still up in the air. It could be a day or three.

Tonight I take my two furballs to a new home and let them get settled in. And then I am going to go have a shot of whiskey, or two, and hopefully talk to someone who doesn’t pity me or try to save me.

From Lady Liberty to Her Troops

See you over the horizon there

storm clouds trouble skies once fair.

With faith in heart, sword in hand

you carry our prayers to distant lands.

Flanders Field, Montezuma’s Hall,

ever have you answered the call

to defend the weak, protect the small,

extending Justice and Liberty equally for all.

Though these ideals from higher be,

they must be earned, are never free.

The blood of patriots too often spilled

in cold, lonely, and desolate fields.

Yet cast your eyes to this torch held high

a beacon of freedom in the sky

our tribute to you is more than tears

nor huddle we from our fears

but grateful hearts and lives lived free

from purple mountains to shining sea

to you our love on winds shall fly

for country, family, and corps,

Semper Fi.

(March 6, 2003)

Someone had a boyfriend over in Iraq and asked me to write a poem on the spur of the moment.  So with pen and bar napkin I wrote this.

On coming out to others about being a pagan

On a discussion board it was asked on how to handle coming out to your parents that you are a pagan. There were lots of thoughtful answers. Here is mine.

I’m throwing out a couple of different thoughts here. Some might be pertinent, or not, connected to each other, or not. But they are various trends and such that I’ve seen, read, or experienced from time to time.

1. To evangelicals we are damned and must be saved. Some very good and loving people genuinely believe they have OUR best interests at heart by trying to convert us as they believe that the real life, the lasting life, the ultimate truth, is what is in the afterlife. This is an idea that extends back to pagan thought (Plato for example) though they believe it is purely a Christian one. Point is, do not mistake hate for love. I’m not saying put up with abuse (gods know I do not) but to return with love when able to.

2. We are seen by many as a fad, a perception with more than its share of truth. There are many many books that are commercially oriented. We’ve got our share of ‘seekers’ like many other religions do. I am guessing there is an inverse correlation of age and willingness to go outside of social norms in terms of religion (a belief that isn’t too novel, but still an unfounded belief without research on my part as far as demographics). There are so many deeply held social conventions in the other dominant religions that have shaped, in major ways, the social fabric. It is easy to see pagans as counter-culturals (a term I mean in its literal sense and of which does not denote shame nor pride). What have we got other than some younger generation folks, or lasting hippies, who gather at various festivals or under moons? The answer is plenty. An approach to this might be to study traditions of the British Isle (with Mummers Dancing, hobby horses, wassailing, etc..) or Appalachian folklore, or whatever area you are in (chances are you’ll find pagan beliefs and practices well camouflaged into mainstream society). Showing these common threads is one way to assuage the fears of our following some shallow fad but that of some deeper and meaningful ‘way’.

3. The guilty person is nervous, the insincere is shaky. When questioned about our beliefs and such, an apologetic is discredited and discounted. Such tones of apology support views that there really is nothing to us, or that we’ve got something to hide. This is especially predominant in terms of sexuality in our pagan culture. Not so much within as on our edges in relations to others. When talking to non pagans some of us adopt tones that are closer to puritanism than Dionysius. For what do we have to be ashamed of? Being earthly bodies with passions? Because we acknowledge that fire exists doesn’t me we sleep with it in a bed of straw. So too with matters of sexuality, and yet some still have the ‘sinful’ attitude towards this because we are afraid of looking bad in the eyes of the puritanical majority… a majority, I believe, that has a warped, twisted, stunted, and unhealthy view of sexuality as a whole. So when talking to someone when you are coming out of the broom closet, trust in your path and feel that grounding in it giving you strength. Instead of looking for their reassurance that you are correct, wish them the same joy on their paths as you’ve found on yours. Return what comes at you with love.

4. Humor. Remember to laugh at our absurdities and hilarities. We are human, we are mammals, and mammals play. We learn through playing. We grow wise through pain. All in all this is good for your soul’s path, your journey through the phases until you too are called to go into the next world, taking what you’ve learned here with you.