Love Unrequited

 Ever woke up in the morning angry? I mean not tired, just angry? I have had a few of those mornings lately. The problem is: I am confused by the origin of this anger.

According to various experts,"anger is what people experience when they fail to get what they think they need or must have.  It is an emotional response to a frustrated demand". Am I frustrated?  Aren't we all frustrated to some extent in our life? The nature of frustration is disappointment, being disgruntled, obstruction, non-fulfillment, etc. Growing up, I always wanted to be a cowboy . Where's the horse, the boots, the spurs, the riding on the trail, and the chasing down of outlaws? There is no beer for my horses and whiskey for my men! So frustration can play a part, but to quote the Rolling Stones, You don't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. Maybe frustration is what I needed!

  Other "experts" say: anger results from how people view what has happened to them. Oh, I see, this is a perception issue!  So if I perceive that the housing market collapse, stock market swindling, pyramid retirement schemes, corporate greed, starving children, abused animals, profit driven health care, lack of care for the homeless and having my head kicked by "the man" whenever possible as good, then I would be happy! Well, how ignorant of me, this anger that I feel is just because I am looking at all these dirty deeds in the wrong way! 

So I want to thank you, Bernie Madoff for stealing millions from hard working Americans, thank you Lehman Brothers, thank you Bank of America, thank you loan specialists for your sub-prime mortgages. Thank you Version, AT&T, American Express, Discover, and Visa for all your hidden fees and charges! A very special thank you goes out to my wonderful student loan companies and governmental organizations for all the thoughtful and considerate regard you have given me while I have tried to attain, through a college education, a small, but important piece of the American Dream. I am so sorry that I saw all of you as greedy, amoral, corrupt individuals and institutions. My bad! I am so sorry that I thought if I paid my taxes, was a faithful husband, a loving father, a hard worker, a defender of the Constitution and the laws that govern this great nation, all while treating others as best that I could, I would somehow be appreciated and given respect. A special, on my knees , I am not worthy sorry, goes out to all these aforementioned companies for my blatantly foolish and absolute disgrace to man decision to try and give back to society by forgoing my own interests and becoming a public school teacher. I mean what was I thinking! I promise to make it up to you on a salary so low, I have to decide between medication and food. I will forever long to look into your eyes and show you that I will become a better person, I will become a true American and start putting my own interests first above others, I can change! Please take me back, I need you so much! I can't live with out you!

Your always and forever,

The Idea Man

P.S.- Please call! I miss hearing your voice!

Moments in Time

The house is dark and quiet, almost tomb-like. The rest of the family slumbers in the deep, darkness of night. I lie awake, unable to quiet my mind. The red glow of my bedside clock informs me that 3.am. is not the time to rise for my day's activities. I ease back into a hypnopompic state. That range of anomalous experiences which surround periods of sleep and are conducive to extraordinary, subjective phenomena.

I see it all so clear, March, 2004. I stumbled out of the hospital into the world that I know, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The smoke slowly mingled in the wind, almost tauntingly, and while glancing across the chilly, early morning sky, a flock of brown, speckled birds flew overhead, majestic and free. The sun was rising gracefully and the glare of the light caused me to wince and recoil. Normally, I love sunrise, the beginning of a new day, hopes and dreams awaiting to be harnessed. Yet, this wasn't any normal day,  I had woke abruptly a few minutes earlier from a hospital lounge chair, as if I knew, and stumbled into his hospital room. I got there just in time to watch him breathe his last breath. I stood there, helpless and numb, his lifeless body looking pale, yet peaceful. A thought shrieked through my mind "I have just watched my father die".

I just knew he would live forever. "He can't really be gone, this is just a dream" I deduced. One of us will wake up soon and we will be arguing over my faults and shortcomings anytime now, just like normal. I feel small. The world seems bigger, harsher, and more confusing. His death wasn't a surprise, he had fought lymphoma with the steely perseverance that he used to survive an impoverished upbringing, actually lasted years longer than the "experts" predicted. It is so like him to "have to have it HIS way"! He was a fighter, but in the end we all lose, no matter how strong. Flashes of memories, bursting with clarity flood my consciousness. I remember mundane and innocuous moments of life he and I shared together that are no more composed in time than leaves in the wind. I take another deep drag off my cigarette and let the nicotine and memories permeate my body. I remember our fishing trips, our fights over useless dissimilarity, taking him to chemotherapy, fixing up an old car, changing his clothes when he was too feeble, and drowning in the desire for him to love me. These feelings are overwhelming, uncontrollable, and necessary. 

The hypnopompic state violently shifts my consciousness to an earlier time period in my life. This memory is less clear, yet just as intense.

Four years ago, almost to the day, I stood in this very same hospital and watched the glorious birth of my son. He was a joyous present from God that transformed my life into something meaningful. I now had a beautiful daughter and an heir to my name! How could such a degenerate, selfish, vulgarian like myself be the recipient of all these blessings. I still don't know the answer to that question. I never knew how transforming the birth of children could be to your soul, if you choose to let the power of life in. I was on cloud nine. I ran out of the birthing room, smiling with fear, and hugged my father, knowing now what he felt some 33 years ago. We were kindred spirits, my father and I, at that moment in time. The son had become a father to a son. I could see in his eyes, the joy, the fear, and the responsibilities that I would now face. He saw into me, letting me know that he hoped I could become a better man, maybe, a better father.

As I drift back to sleep, I come to know that the whole of life is but a moment in time and the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.

Reply to Anonymous

Very well spoken! Kudos to your insight. I spend my day helping others, actually it is my career. Changing the life of one person multiplies exponentially and ripples through the world like a pebble throw into the ocean. I never have wished to attain value and recognition in the history books, yet I feel that my toil and trouble is much like an arrow that never quite hits its mark. I am just off center somewhat and need to redirect my aim towards giving, not taking from the world and those around me. Please grace me with more insight as this blog has a goal of connecting with others.
 

Against the Wind: Life and It's Supposed Meaning; Digging Up Bones:Part Two

Against the Wind: Life and It's Supposed Meaning; Digging Up Bones:Part Two

Life and It's Supposed Meaning; Digging Up Bones:Part Two

Why are you here? On this planet, living your life, either wallowing in "quiet desperation" or "living the dream".  I spent my excursion on the circadian commute to my place of employment reflecting on yesterday's pro football game between Dallas and and Tampa Bay. I watched in awe at the physical prowness of some of the chosen few gifted people chasing the pigskin and I wondered; why did some people get so much while others received so little? Is this a direct reflection of God's unyielding power or are we a naive' consumers of free choice? This question reactivated my reflection concerning the elusive remembrance of the past.

As I stated in Digging Up Bones: Part One, I have reconnected with some of my childhood/teenage friends. Some have become very successful, a talented singer/actress, a podcast producing California beatnik, lawyers, doctors, and State senators, just to name a few. These fortuitous individuals, at the time, seemed no different than me. Since hindsight is 20/20, I now realize they were much different. Somehow, someway, they were consciously focused on or led blindly to their destiny. They intuitively understood Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues idea that "the greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources". Looking back, I never remember seeing any opportunities, although, most assuredly they existed.

Upon pondering my compatriot's achievements, these Pink Floyd lyrics permeate my musings:“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun". My starting gun must have had a silencer, because I never heard it, or maybe I just wasn't listening. I remember, as a youth, feeling that I had time to accomplish anything. Time was irrelevant and never ending. It seems like just yesterday that my 15 year old body was atop a Honda Twinstar 250 motorcycle careening along I-40 towards Little Rock: destination, McCain Mall, a veritable plethora of perceived feminine interaction and opportunity. I was barely old enough to legally drive a motorcycle and  immensely sure I was not old enough too care. I danced with the devil, laughed with the sinners and with hedonistic zest, roamed the unpredictable world of young adulthood. My journey through Wonderland would have made Jack Kerouac blush and Robert Frost step quickly to the embankment of the  "road less traveled", or so I thought. How the inflated perception of yourself allows for a narcissistic impression of your conquests, when we are all really a speck in the universe and a wink in time.

Somewhere along the way, father time caught me sneaking out my bedroom window and grounded me to old age.  With one leg planted in my proverbial room, balancing my escape from childhood with one leg and the other leg dangling out the window grasping for adulthood, all the while teetering over the window ledge as not  to damage my manhood, I turned and exclaimed, "I was just going out for a while and I'll be back soon"! His resolve undeterred, I was forever stripped of my privilege of youth.

 Don't take this blog as an admission of failure or an essay to produce pity. My guardian angel has been working overtime and I have been blessed with more riches than one microscopic man deserves. This was merely a divergence into retrospection.

Bob Seger said it perfectly, " I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then".

 

Diggin Up Bones

Facebook has opened up a new world for me-the past. I have always liked this quote: What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now. ~Author Unknown. The power of technology has allowed me to re-open doors that were previously nailed shut. I kept these doors locked for fear of what I might find. There are some doors with nightmares and regret, there are doors filled with innocence, there are doors filled with love, and there are doors that need to remain closed. The decisions made in our past reflect whom we have become. I sit and wonder sometime , what it I had.... and I will never know. Should I even care? I am who I am and reliving the past will not change that. I have come in contact with friends that I have not seen or heard from in over 20 years. We have changed, or I prefer to say, we have grown. The innocent little childish connections that defined our friendships have grown into adult complexity. The time has come to set aside childish things. I now know that whoever I am, I have become this person because of your friendship, my friends, I thank you for this.

Health Care Reform: What is the problem?

As I sit listening to the rain fall delicately upon my un-mowed lawn, I struggle with the shearing off of the moral fabric of our great country. I ponder, how can a person be against universal health care? “America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens.”- George W. Bush-Inaugural address, 2001. I fear that former President Bush will come to see that “our ideals” have become unbound and polarized. We, as a nation, are as divided as ever. “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes." –Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), on what is needed to defeat health care reform, Aug. 31, 2009. Is this what Former President Bush meant by “bound by ideals”? I am also really confused by the pro-life groups against universal health care. Save the fetus, but to hell with the child once they are born."That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress, and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions." —Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a pro-lifer. Yet, "Today’s Census data show that there are 8.1 million uninsured children in America.”-Children’s Defense Fund. Am I the only person who recognizes this irony?

Does the government have the answer? They have not had an impressive record of running programs. I think of a quote by Thomas Jefferson: “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

I am confused, as my good friend James M. stated about my position on health care reform. “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." —Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama's health care reform plan. Doesn’t the “death panel” already exist with insurance companies deciding whether to pay or not to pay for someone's treatment, Am I the only person who has to get preauthorization for medical treatments? Sure Obama’s plan has gaps, needs work, but at least it is a start. You have to crawl before you can walk, right?

This is just the beginning of our debate. I will listen intently to both sides and blog about my findings later.