Clarence Sad Clown

 ~                                                                                                                        ~~                                                             ~~                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      C                                                                                                          l                                                                                                              a         ~~~~~~~~                                                                                    r                                                                                                            E                                                                                                         n                                                                                                            c                                                                                                            e                                                                                       ~~~~                                                                                                                                S                                                                                                           a                                                                                                              d                                      ~~                                                                                                                 ~~~~~~                                     C                                                                                                             l                                                                                                            o                                                                                                            w                                                                                      N  .... 

              ~~~~~~  ~~~~~~~~                                                                                                                      ~~~~~~  ~~                                   justice                                                                                                                                                                    ~~~~~~                                                                                                      ~~~~~~~~                                                                                

Is Healthcare a Right?

On a recent car ride I made a voice note of my thoughts about healthcare as a right and posted it on YouTube with a transcription to hopefully make it more discernible.

Link to YouTube

Here is the transcript if you would prefer to read it:

Driving home from Santa Barbara to LA and on the freeway I see, once I get near LA , a big plume of smoke and I know it’s a fire. You see them occasionally but you know what it is. It is a fire. Might be a grass fire might be a home might be a business. But am I worried? No. There is a whole team of people who are waiting for this kind of thing to happen and are responding to it on my behalf in some ways. I mean I don’t live in LA but I’m driving through it. It might impede my passage. I’m part of it. On behalf of all of us these people are dealing with that fire. What is fire? It is this innocuous really indescribable thing. It doesn’t have substance but we have teams of people whose sole job is to combat that thing on behalf of us all. It is a tremendous demonstration of the cooperative project that we are all involved in and that is making this thing called life, another indescribable entity, thing, there’s no substance to it, life, but that is our project. We are doing it together! We can’t do it alone. It has been demonstrated. I don’t think that anyone could seriously posit that a human could survive on their own in the wild like a lot of animals do. We have to get together to perpetuate. No one (could say otherwise). Maybe someone could. I would be interested to hear the argument. I don’t think it is possible. So we get together. That has been our formula for success is we collaborate and take care of the things that threaten us. And we get together and we take care of certain needs. That we have to fulfill them or to make them go away such as hunger or shelter. That is all collaborative. We rely on each other, which means everyone, to solve those issues; food, shelter...

Healthcare is another one of those things and that is why some people call it a right but they don’t say we have a right to food or shelter. Some people do. Not really commonly accepted right now in 2016 that people have a right to that. There is definitely a segment of the population (saying that) but health care we are hearing people allude to it as a right. And I don’t know if I buy that. I don't know that I buy that as a right. I really see health care as an obligation.

I think it should be a single payer, us collectively, the government …

So, the government as a single payer is us, all of us, collaboratively paying for this thing to happen. I do think that we have an obligation to do that for each other. Just like we have an obligation to put out fires and protect and serve, the police, things like that. In that way it is a fundamental ... I wouldn’t call it a right. I think it is part of what we owe to each other. Rights are things that are given to you, I don’t know how to describe it but god is close. There are inalienable rights given to us by our creator, I think is a good way of putting it, that precede, a priori, government. We give government power, I do believe that, so our rights come before the government. We create the government in order to form a more perfect union. That is how it is described in our Constitution; that wonderful document. That is our project. To create a more perfect union. Notice it doesn’t say the first union. It says a more perfect union. Which means it recognizes that we are already involved in this collaborative project and the reason that government is being established is there is another layer that we are putting on top of that collaborative project in order to make it more perfect. Perfect being a euphemism. Obviously nothing could ever be perfect but "more perfect" insinuating that it could be better. So that is what we are attempting to do and in order to do that we, collectively, are going to create an environment that is conducive to that and health care is part of that. 

And the fact that we can provide healthcare? That we have gotten to such a level this is something we can provide? I mean governments back a couple hundred years ago at the very least, sure we could ask them to provide healthcare but there was not much they could provide at that time compared to what can be provided at this time. So the fact that we can provide healthcare comes from this collaborative project. It would have never come out of any solo... it hasn’t... there are so many facets to it. It has come out of this collective project. So it belongs to the collective. I know this sounds like a socialist or communist statement. I’m not going there. I’m saying it came from our collective project so it is something that we could give because it is ours and there are benefits to giving it. It makes our union more perfect. It makes our citizens better able to perform their duties as citizens and as a consumer. Our citizens have certain roles that we need them to play in order for our union to be more perfect. Citizen, consumer are a couple of them and healthcare enables them to do that. So why not provide it as best we can as cheaply as we can?

Certainly people deserve to get paid for this service and that is why I don’t call it a right because we are asking other people to perform this service so it is really an obligation. There are people who love doing it and are good at doing it and we need them to do it. They deserve to get paid to do it absolutely. It is a vital function. But at the same time it has to be cost effective in order for it to be ultimately successful in aiding our more perfect union.  So how do you keep the cost down? Frankly my answer to that is that you take the profit motive out of it. I know that sounds communist/socialist as well but I’m not advocating taking the profit motive out of everything. Hardly! I believe in the profit motive. It is a tremendous engine for growth but in this instance it is counterproductive. So that is what government can do for us. It can take the profit motive out of providing a resource that enables our citizens to become better able to serve in the role that we need them to serve in because this is a collaborative project. 

Why is the profit motive counterproductive to healthcare? Obviously it increases the cost but my argument is by the nature of healthcare it disproportionately increases the cost because profit motive is a tremendous growth engine in the free market (which is another area we need our citizens to be stewards playing roles in) purchasing, that decision is the fuel of the profit motive [sic] engine but in the instance of healthcare you can’t make a decision, a rational decision, a free market decision, you can’t make that kind of decision in the arena of healthcare. Your supply and demand are way out of whack because your life is precious and you don’t have the option of saying no. That is really what the key to free market growth profit center - is the consumer has to say no. That is our group decision on what is valuable and what is not and consumers can’t say no to healthcare. They don’t have that option. So it does not work in the free market profit mode and it is costing us. It is something that is taking resources away from things that we could better apply those resources to. I’m talking about money. Certainly we need to figure out the best way to provide healthcare. It is possible to screw that up and be counterproductive by not providing enough incentive for service and development. We definitely need to maintain a level of that. Growth and change are absolutely imperative. We can’t stagnate. We have to bring good people in by offering a living wage or some other incentive. When I say a living wage I mean something competitive. It may be a stipend, a guarantee in retirement. It doesn’t have to be a wage. As a society we can say “you are valuable”, “we will take care of you”, “there may be certain things you can rely on if you make this commitment to help us out”, there’s options. That we have to do, we have to do it right. But still, it can’t be based on free market decisions and process because it is not applicable. You can’t say no.

Inauguration of a new era.

Approaching the election of 2016 I had the sense that the Trump campaign would prevail. I had a lot of friends who didn’t give it a chance in hell but I was getting the sense from my social media feeds, some of my other social settings and the news sources I was tuned to, that there was a significant segment who were supportive of him and there was another segment that was totally disenchanted with the Clinton campaign. My worst fear was that this combination of factors would produce a victory for, what I considered, a truly abominable candidate.  I was actually in the Trump camp at one point. I remember a conversation in September of 2015, with some people I barely knew, where I actually spoke the words “I would like to see a Trump presidency”. I was one of those who was disgusted with politics and thought that Trump might actually stir things up. I knew that he was touting some absurd policies but I wrote that off as theater and felt that he was playing the game well. I believed his continued success would force him to the center, like it had all previous candidates, and that he may just go the exceedingly functional route to address those in the center just like Ross Perot had. I followed the campaign avidly, as I had all previous Presidential races, and with every passing week my support for Trump decreased. I had given him the benefit of the doubt that he was an intelligent person on some levels. After all he had built an empire of sorts. Could a buffoon really do that? Each absurd statement and publicity stunt indicated to me that he did not have any real intelligence but was just the inheritor of wealth and used that to secure himself a spot in that echelon. For me the final straw was his “2nd Amendment people” speech in the early summer of 2016. It was clear to me that his insinuation was that gun zealots assassinate Hillary Clinton despite the contorted disputations of him and his minions that gun zealots were being called to exercise their political power. It was apparent that he had zero sense of decorum and absolutely no comprehension of the intricacies of politics. He could not be trusted with the ultimate power our president was granted. I posted a rare political Facebook statement raising the red flag and was somewhat dismayed to find that my sense of outrage was not widely shared. There were a few who shared my sense that this had crossed a line but this was not the fatal blow to his campaign that I felt it should be. It was just another blip on the radar. I watched in horror over the next several months while the campaign ebbed and flowed for him but the Democrats were never able to deliver the knockout punch but instead repeatedly undermined their own campaign. By the time the election arrived I could only put my faith in the humanity of the electorate of the United States that they would not allow such a travesty to ascend to the ultimate seat of authority. On Election Day I checked my phone at 7pm Pacific Time as I was on my way home and saw that there were several red states on the board to only a few blue and I knew then that it was over. If Trump was not repudiated by Middle America the election was his. And by 10pm it was clear that he had won. My initial thought was that there was a dark underside to my country, larger than I had even expected, who voted him in to office to reaffirm their gloomy world view. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I finally saw the statistic that showed me my fears were even worse than I had imagined. On some political talk show analyzing the unexpected results of the election a graphic went on screen and exposed that Trump had gotten roughly the same number of votes that Romney and McCain had gotten in their losing effort.  Clinton had gotten several million fewer votes than Obama and third parties did not account for the difference. So the truth of the matter was not that there was a larger dark side to my country than I originally had expected but that the moderate voters who had embraced Obama’s message of hope and change had simply let Trump win because Hillary just wasn’t sexy enough for them. Granted the Clinton campaign did an abysmal job of reaching out to those voters but still the presidential campaign does have consequences and millions of people failed to see the significance and let the worst of our country prevail rather than holding their nose and doing what was right. My team was lame.

This perspective affected me greatly in the weeks following the election and I could not share my compatriots’ outrage at the result. He did not do anything extraordinary. This was a colossal failure by the left. Nothing more. Even as talk of Russian interference increased I could not put any stock in that. Trump got the same number of votes as Romney and McCain and they lost! The blame for this situation lay at our feet. No one else.  As the inauguration approached I was similarly jaded. Some of my closest friends were talking about the demonstration that was being planned for the day after the inauguration and I was still uninspired. First of all it was being largely referred to as a protest. This seemed to me a strange reaction and I could not discount the Trump proponents who characterized the reaction of the left as essentially a tantrum. There was simply no evidence of anything nefarious. This was simply a bungle on an epic scale. The Democratic Party couldn’t even defeat a clown! If anything needed to be protested it was ourselves. Secondly, I had seen protests like this before and found them to be initially uplifting but ultimately impotent if not counterproductive to real change.

Still the consequences of this election were becoming decidedly real with Trump’s cabinet appointees and I had to ask myself what I was going to do. My initial reaction was to flee. I couldn’t picture myself in a society that would allow this to happen. But on serious reflection I had to admit that I hadn’t done my part at this moment and I did have a deep attachment to my country and the ideals I thought it was founded on so I needed to step up. I have been similarly stirred to a sense of action in the past. I was in the camp that saw the Iran-Contra affair as the ultimate abuse of power. One that, if allowed to go unpunished, would spell the end of the foundation of our society. Again I was somewhat surprised that others did not share my outrage but there was a movement of sorts and there were some repercussions, of sorts, so it all played out in a way that didn’t totally discourage me. It did leave a bad taste in my mouth. At the same time I was trying to reconcile the inanity of the drug war and was firmly convinced that it was all based on corporate profit. The government was acting as an agent of the pharmaceutical companies to ensure their profits over others. Not for the good of the country. Similarly, it seemed to me that the pursuit of nuclear technology was suicide by another name. I volunteered for organizations that lobbied against the nuclear arms race and was baffled that this issue was on the periphery of social discourse. I was very active in the counter culture, traveling with a band that was overtly critical of the current government. The community seemed strong to me at that time. There was a large group of like-minded people and benefit concerts were too numerous if anything. Live Aid had convinced too many people that concerts could change the world. We got Bill Clinton elected and things seemed to be moving in the right direction. But Bill was fatally flawed and I believe the morass he got himself in to ultimately pulled him more towards the right than was necessary in order to appease his detractors. Ending Welfare, bombing, NAFTA … It all started to seem like more of the same. By the time George W. Bush got elected my mind was jelly. I just could not get my head around how things had gone so sideways. I had taken every political science course at the City College and maintained a deep reading list of domestic and foreign affairs even though I was only marginally involved in the counter culture which seemed to me at that time largely impotent and ineffectual. I was haunted by Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Particularly the part where he talks about how the powers that be actually benefit from the appearance of dissent and the counter culture served that purpose to a tee. As long as nothing ever changed “they” were able to point to us and say “We are not tyrants. There are dissenters!” I was determined to find a path toward change. Not merely dissent. When the invasion of Iraq was announced I was again stimulated to make my voice heard. I traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the march against the Iraq war. It was a brutally cold day but still 100,000 people showed up and I was invigorated to know that I was not alone in my dissent. I was disappointed to find that I was alone in my desire to change things. All I heard there was dissent. A lot of “NO!”  Very little “This is the alternative”. 

The reelection of George W. was a major breaking point for me. I had volunteered for the Kerry campaign and it seemed quite obvious to me who was the best choice for the job even though Kerry didn’t present himself very well in that contest. I was finally convinced that there was absolutely no logic nor reason in the political process and that it was largely controlled by forces that were hidden and, from what I could glean, much more powerful than I could possibly combat on my own. By this time I had gotten myself in to main stream America and found that the creature comforts provided by the corporatocracy far outweighed any emoluments that integrity and grace and nobility could provide. I was originally in the McCain camp in 2008. I liked Barack Obama. I thought he was a good speaker but I thought he was too green and that he would be easily out gamed at politics and ultimately his failure would tar the left. When McCain announced Palin as his running mate I had to reconsider everything and voted for Obama with trepidation. As the economy collapsed months before the election I was convinced that it was an intentional act. That “they” were going to saddle him with an intractable crisis and they would let it dissolve for four years so that they could come to the rescue. “They” could survive for four years and the whole "create a crisis so you can provide the solution" ploy had been demonstrably proven as their modus operandi for 500 years or more. Now, despite the fact that President Obama outwitted them for the most part, we can see that they are still following that script, because that has been their modus operandi too, decrying the carnage of America during the Obama administration. Stick to the script. The rise of Donald Trump seems off script too so, in that way, it provides a glimpse of hope that things can change. 

So, now, I’m watching the current events with an eye towards whether there are the sufficient components for change still unsure what that change might actually be. One of my core beliefs is that a few essential mindsets need to change. Part of my frustration with the dissenters has always been this prevailing attitude that we just need to beat them at their game. Well what kind of victory would that be? We would be the owners of the spoils we disdained. No. What needed to change was the game. Not the winners. The entire game. Their game is acquiring and domination. Fear and hate are their tactics for winning that game. My game is providing and cooperation and my tactics are peace and love. Yes I came up in the reggae scene but I ended up there because it corroborated my belief that it was the best way to achieve a more perfect union not for any sentimental reason and not because they changed my point of view from some previous held position. I had come to the peace and love conclusion from reading Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Locke, Rousseau, Plato... The list goes on. The western philosophical tradition is all about peace and love. So as the Trump dissenters began to foment I didn’t see much of a change on the horizon. It all sounded like fear and hate to me. I planned for the long haul. I had seen what peaking too early could do. The enormous outpouring at the initial moment of inspiration dissolves rapidly as it is impossible to sustain a full sprint for much longer than a couple hundred yards. I knew that real change was hard work that required real sacrifice and that marching through the streets with other like-minded dissenters was too easy and ultimately served the powers that be, not our cause. What I would have liked to have seen was a national strike, something that had real impact. A party on Saturday is nothing more than a dalliance. 

Ultimately though, what really needs to happen is the dissenters need to do the hard work. Run for office. Get elected. Make tough choices. Show through action and policy that love and peace can provide a more perfect union than the politics of greed. Maybe this could be the spark to make that happen. I watched. I eagerly tuned in. And I was pleasantly surprised to see Naomi Klein talk about making the Democrats better and not losing site of the mistakes that were made. And to hear Josh Fox talk about the water protectors at Standing Rock employing love of their adversaries not because it was easy but because it was necessary and that this was the true revolution at hand. And to hear Van Jones talk about how love means being honest with your adversary as well as yourself and holding them and yourself accountable to what is right. And all the talk of intersectionality and its implications that we are all one. And to hear Kamala Harris point out that although it is convenient to frame the current issues as women’s issues that distinction is ultimately specious. The critical issues on the table apply to people. All people. Even “them”. They are people too. And as soon as we lose sight of that we have lost.

"Without path from protest to power, the women's march will end up like Occupy"

My Dad

I’m thinking about my dad on this Veteran’s day 2016, ten years after his passing, and he remains an enigma. My dad was one of the most gregarious people I have ever known! He always approached strangers and struck up a conversation but he never revealed much of himself. He was also one of the most private people I have ever known.

The family line as I recall it, growing up, was that dad had served in World War II but was on a ship in the Atlantic when the armistice was announced. We knew that he had served in the Korean conflict, too, but there was not a lot of detail around that. He didn't have any memorabilia, not his Purple Heart medal (which I only surmised he must have gotten when I heard about the shrapnel that remained in his arm), not any mention of a comrade, I never even saw a photograph from that time. As I look back on it now, it strikes me as odd that my dad and I never talked about that aspect of life. I was fascinated with the military as a child, playing with toy soldiers and G.I. Joes and even read a lot about the battles of World War II and played board games simulating them but, I don’t ever recall talking with him about it. Maybe I had a sense that it was off limits.

My parents divorced when I was 12 but my dad remained nearby and was a constant presence in my life. He often made it to my sporting events and even my performances with the school band or theater. We spent many Sundays together too. He expressed his love for me in a stoic fashion; very few hugs and kisses but a constant supportive presence. As I entered college I moved away and our communication became sparser but I still made it a point to contact him. I moved even farther away after college and he retired to South Carolina so we were literally on opposite sides of the country. Our contact was reduced to a phone call a couple times a year. He was always happy to hear from me but always cut those calls shorter than I wanted. I'm not sure if it was his frugality, now living on a fixed income and not wanting to incur long distance charges, or his awareness of my impecunious state and not wanting me to incur long distance charges or whether he was unwillingness to get in to deeper topics of conversation. The only time I saw him in my twenties was when we both traveled to Chicago for my brother's PhD graduation. Dad was a big man at 6'4" and had many back problems so he always complained about plane travel. Traveling cross country to see me wasn't discussed. I just understood that it wasn't an option.

Once I got myself to a place where I had an income I made it a point to go see him once a year. He always expressed great happiness in seeing me and his wife made it a point to tell me, when we had a moment alone, how much my visits meant to him. On one of my visits, as we were chatting after dinner, he handed me a photo album and told me he had spent some time assembling pictures from his life. He was having some health issues after a lifetime of smoking cigarettes and he was softening up. I opened the album with great curiosity and found on one of the first pages a black and white picture of him in army fatigues holding two pistols much like today's gangster rappers. In the background were two palm trees. "Is this Korea?" I asked. He told me that it was World War II and that he had actually served in the Pacific and this picture was taken in the Philippines. After a little prodding he went on to explain how he had run away from home at 17 after his father had beat him for going to swim team practice. Dad grew up in a rural house, the youngest of twelve children, on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. His mother passed when he was four years old and his father started working at an automotive parts factory in the US when he was young so he was raised by an older sister. Dad described to me, that night he showed me his photo album, how he found himself on the streets of Buffalo, NY, literally penniless and hungry and in front of the Army recruiting office. I'm unclear on the timing of this. I'm guessing it was the fall of 1945 as he told me he was 17 when he was deployed to the Pacific theater. He said that he spent 6 weeks training as an anti-aircraft gunner in Arkansas and once he got to Seattle to deploy was told he was joining the infantry. He was the tallest member of his squad so was made the squad leader despite his youth. His Canadian citizenry came to light at this time and he was told that he couldn't be deployed unless he was a citizen so was offered citizenship. He agreed and they made him a citizen on the spot. As squad leader it was his responsibility to lead the charge on the beach they landed on.  He told me how he ran through the shallow waters of the Pacific on to the beach in a hail of bullets and mortar fire and miraculously made it to the edge of the forest. As he told the story I tried to digest it. As I inserted his story into my knowledge of this setting it dawned on me, ever so clearly, and I had to ask, "So, you killed people?" Dad did not hesitate. "Oh yeah," he admitted matter-of-factly, "More than I can remember." That was difficult for me to assimilate. My dad had killed more people than he could remember! I chose not to focus on it but, instead, tried to find something positive. "Did you keep in touch with any of your squad?" I was thinking about the Hollywood version of war. "No. I lost half my squad every day. There was no point in getting to know anyone. You never knew who would survive." I just kind of stared blankly not sure what to say. He could tell I was struggling and went on to tell me how terrible it was and his only goal was to survive. We talked about what it was like for him to return to normal life. After spending some time as a drill sergeant stateside  he went back to upstate New York and his older step brother took him in. He actually had to finish High School! He was allowed to attend the public high school nearby but only after the principal sat him down and told him he was to stay away from the girls. He completed his senior year without incident and took advantage of the G.I. bill to enroll in college after spending a couple years saving money. He was determined to have a normal life but as the Korean conflict involved US troops my father was called to serve again. I'm not clear on why his service in World War II didn't fulfill his obligation but he was required to return to the military even though he was adamantly opposed to it. He told me, that night, of a conversation he had with a US Army officer where he asked what would happen if he didn't show up and was told that he would be jailed. It seems he could have easily gone to Canada, where the majority of his family lived, and avoid service. Maybe not. 

Regardless he found himself on the front lines of the Korean conflict. He was part of an intelligence unit that would actually venture behind enemy lines at night, hide in the brush all day taking notes, and then return the next evening. I asked him about peeing while hidden in the brush and he just laughed. "You just wet yourself! There was enemy soldiers everywhere so you didn't dare move and risk being detected."  He then went on to tell me how they would send their compatriots off at night following a defined route  and when they heard the explosion of a land mine they would calculate the spot on a map and that is how they determined the route for the next guy not to take. He also told me how he and two other guys were atop a peak, calling in aerial strikes, when the enemy made a push and trapped them behind enemy lines. They stayed there for 69 days with supplies being dropped in. He said the hardest part was keeping their food from the rats. They would put the food in the ammunition boxes and sleep with it in order to keep it from the rats even though there was risk that the ammunition might be compromised by moisture. They survived multiple attempts by the enemy to take their position. He would see the enemy advancing and watch troops ascend the hillside below them. As the enemy got closer they would pull the pin on a grenade and let it roll down the hill and watch enemy soldiers fly off the hillside when the grenade exploded. After 69 days the allies finally pushed forward and they were able to come down from that peak. They had to cut their uniforms off and immediately burned them.

I sat there, in my Dad’s living room, trying to reconcile the man who endured the horrors of war twice with the man who raised me working a white collar job and living a typical American life. The truth of the matter was that I was struggling to understand myself at that time and my Dad’s role in my formation was something I was trying to reconcile too. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have gone through his experience rather than the jejune path of my early adulthood. I couldn’t.

That was 20 years ago and I'm still trying to understand what his life must have been like and it has occurred to me that my Dad’s experience was common for his generation and for the Vietnam generation too. The thing that really sticks with me was my Dad’s absolute yearning for a normal life. That impulse, I think, had the single largest impact on me and my generation.  I certainly appreciate the normalcy that he provided. Even though my parents divorced in the mid-70s, and that was uncommon at that time, we still maintained a standard middle class life with the luxuries and amenities afforded United States residents of that time. All driven by a couple generations of men who survived the horrors of war and were determined to have a normal, comfortable life.

My father passed away ten years ago and I rue that I was never able to get more clarity on that era of his life. I briefly researched what was available on line thinking maybe I could find what division my dad served in and find some history on their experience in the Pacific theater. I found that most of the records of that time were lost in a fire at the Pentagon and abandoned my efforts. I’m not sure I want to know all that my Dad endured but I still wonder about it often. Recently I saw an article about pictures from the Korean War that were just released. I decided I would look to see if I could find my dad in any of them. One of the first I found was this -

The soldier giving solace bears a striking resemblance to my father, particularly the pictures I have seen from that time. I've zoomed in to see if I could determine if it was my dad and can't tell definitively. Still, the emotion in this picture informs me of the dreadfulness my dad endured and I am even more filled with respect and admiration for his ability to survive that and maintain his sanity. 

Universal truth

Instead of comparing our lives to those we consider more fortunate, we should rather compare to all those who have lived.  Then we would see how fortunate we are.  Helen Keller said something like that once. I have been saying something like that for a long time. It bears repeating. I have long felt that there was some universal truth to it.  I am convinced that our ability to compare and contrast is our competitive advantage and this idea of being able to compare our lives to all who have lived, not just humans but all who lived, is a unique ability. So when I read that quote by Helen Keller the other day I was struck once again. And it dawned on me that this could have been practiced by any sentient being and the conclusion would be largely the same - Life is good! At first this struck me as a flaw in the thinking. That if it were true that this maxim could apply to all sentient beings at their time the maxim had no value.  Value comes from singularity doesn't it?  That's what I said to myself. But then it dawned on me that this broad quality approached universality and that there is value in that. Universal truths are the framework. 

If it were true that humans are mainly motivated by pleasure, as some have claimed, it seems that they would endeavor to simplify their lives. Life's simple pleasures are the best. We have been hearing that for millennia. Our experience bears that out. So why do humans complicate their lives? I think it is because they are mainly motivated by fear. Fear is mainly irrational. Of course there are legitimate fears but those generate either paralysis or tightly focused action. Illegitimate fear generates unfocused action.  Because the fear is unfounded there is no concrete target for that action. So life, for many humans, is this series of unfocused actions responding to some irrational fear. This leads to unnecessary complexities. A lot of people are afraid of being alone. In response they create a multitude of affectations. This gives them a sense that they are addressing their aloneness - That they are moving to togetherness. This apparent success breads further affectations. After all if something "works" then it is worth repeating or elaborating. The returns on these apparent successes quickly diminishes because an excess of affectation is counterproductive to relating because so many artificial layers make it difficult to connect on a fundamental level. This connection on a fundamental level is the only emollient for the fear of aloneness. 

Awakening

There is that fundamental energy; that which drives us forward.

It manifests itself strongly in intersexual relationships. The desire to create. It is the core strength.

Brutish. Unrelenting. Overwhelming. Enlightening.

I feel its pull. I grit my teeth. I desire. I will not bow my head.

I love it. I cherish it. I would give it my kiss.

Yes! It is perfect. Love! Love of the deepest kind. 

End of an Era

So nice to hear from you Ellie! I'm glad to hear you are thriving. I'm sure grandmotherhood suits you perfectly. I have been thinking about you recently. My mother passed away on December 30th. I thought you might like to know. I'm certain that you two had met. It was  the end for her. She was 88. All things considered it was a great ending. She was present right up until the very end. She had a liver disease that was sapping her strength but not her mind. She almost died twice in the fall of 2013. She ended up being severely anemic both times. They never had an explanation for it. The second time was Thanksgiving. She decided at that time she didn't want to go back to the hospital ever. She was prescribed in-home Hospice in July of 2014. She was still getting up in the morning and getting dressed. She would even make a pot of coffee and have some cookies. Between meals she sat on the couch. She could only get up for a minute or two and then she didn't feel like she could stand any more. Rhoda moved to just 5 miles away and I have been going up every other month. With the Hospice staff making regular visits, we had a few more sets of eyes on her. By all accounts she was doing surprisingly well. By September though she was even weaker so Rhoda moved in with her. Rhoda still worked. She's got her own acupuncture practice so that is highly demanding too. Her mother-in-law celebrated her 80th birthday in France on Thanksgiving 2014.  So, with the blessing of my employer to work from home,  I moved in with my mom on November 7 so Rhoda could make that trip. My first week there Ma was very much the same except she weighed only 65 lbs!! Just skin and bone but still doing crosswords and never missing an episode of Jeopardy! The second week I was there she announced on Tuesday morning that she wasn't getting out of bed any more. She spent the next three days in bed but got up over the weekend and seemed back to normal. That next Tuesday she announced again that she wasn't getting out of bed anymore. She never did. Not on her own power. Still she was present. I brought her food and her medicine and she would complain about both but I would always get her to take them. Near Thanksgiving she was pretty out of it. Inchorent sometimes. She was talking about death and saying it was imminent.

I encouraged her to wait until Rhoda got back from France. Rhoda happened to be coming back on her 88th birthday so that was added encouragement. She buckled down and made it to Rhoda's return. We had a nice birthday party for her and she was very happy. Royd had scheduled a trip to see her on Dec. 12th so that became her next target which she made easily. She was very much present by the time he arrived and had stopped talking about death. Rhoda's daughter, Camille, was returning from her Senior year at Bard for the final time. Mom made that target too. She was doing so well that I went back to Santa Barbara for a weekend. It seemed like this might go on for a while. I got permission from Johnson & Johnson to extend my stay. Working from there was as good, if not better, than me being in the office.  I got back to Mom's on the 22nd and we had a nice Christmas on the 26th. Camille celebrated on the 25th with her father. Mom agreed to get in the wheelchair and come out and celebrate Christmas. That was a first. We got her out on the deck of her condo and she reveled in the fresh air and bright colors. She had a big window by her bed which she had been staring out of  ever since she became bed ridden. Being outside was better. A couple days later she agreed to go out on the deck and we had our breakfast out there. She honked at the geese as they flew over. The morning of the 29th she was a changed person. She had this blank stare and stopped talking almost entirely. If I pressed her she would say "Yes" or "No" or, most commonly, "I don't know." Tuesday the 30th she was the same. Even though she wouldn't talk to me or look directly at me, she would hold out her fist to bump like I taught her when she first became bed ridden. The nurse's aide arrived and asked if she wanted a bed bath and she said "Yes" and even commented that it felt good. The spiritual counselor came next and they had an intense conversation where my mom said she was seeing her parents and the counselor encouraged her to let go. Ma said she understood. A few hours later it was time for her to use the commode and I asked her if she needed to go and she said yes. I put her on the commode and she never responded. She was breathing and her eyes were open but she never recognized me. I asked her if she was going or not and got nothing back. I turned the lights out and put a flash light in her eyes and there was no pupillary response. When I turned the lights back on I heard some urine fall in to the bucket and said "Oh you are peeing" (Amazing how close death had brought us in some ways) but when I turned to look she was slumped over. She was gone.

It is an epic time El. Not sure if your folks are still alive but these last few months have been epic. I'm making my way through. Rhoda and I have been prepping her condo to sell and taking care of all the business of her passing. I am back at work. Not really liking it but, for the most part, I can not complain. I'm doing something interesting and getting paid very nicely. It is a good group of people too so I feel fortunate. Still, I am lucky enough to be able to pursue a better situation and I think there is a better situation for me out there so will be doing more exploring. I just got a call from an old friend who now lives in Raleigh! Maybe North Carolina is calling me. I will be going to Camille's graduation in NY in May and we are planning a memorial for my mom in Rochester for July 24th to coincide with her family's reunion.  That will be the beginning of a new era.