Roots

It's the middle of the day, Monday.  I've got comments from co-authors to incorporate, analysis plans to generate, and the GRE to study for.  I don't have time to write (or rather, I don't have time to write anything unrelated to what the folks are paying me for).  But, when you have to write, you have to write and all the world has to sit down and shut the fuck up for a minute until the words clear your head.  Then all other noise can resume.

DeAndre McCullough died of a drug overdose a day or two ago.  Mr. McCullough is really only known to me in fiction, through the HBO mini-series The Corner, which was based on his story, and through his in-person portrayal of Lamar, on The Wire.  I read David Simon's personal obit for him, and also the obituary (largely borrowed from David Simon's) posted in the Baltimore Sun. 

"If I close my eyes, the fifteen year old comes to me. His laughter, his wit, his foolishness and ridiculous rationalization mixed in equal measure with his goodness and honesty. I can forgive the addict who came to dominate that young life. I can let go of all the frustration and exhaustion that came with twenty years of faithlessness and hurt. I see, in the end, a man who was in great, unending pain. And I want him to rest now.

In spite of everything, I will miss him badly. I know because I’ve been here before. With Dinky. And Curt. And Ella. And Gary — especially Gary McCullough, the wounded father who in some awful way was a pathfinder for his wounded son.  When you tell yourself you are going to write a story about real people, you say so in the abstract, without any real sense of the beings you haven’t yet met, without any measure of the real cost of addressing actual human realities.

Well then, amid all of the easy labels and stereotypes that will now certainly apply, let me offer only the following:  I once had the privilege to know a boy named DeAndre McCullough, who at the age of fifteen had led a life of considerable deprivation, but who nonetheless was the fine and fascinating measure of a human soul. Everything after, even the very book that we wrote about his world, today seems like useless and unimportant commentary."                        - David Simon

My life is a little chaotic right now.  A process that we can call "evolution", but most of the time just looks like a mess.  I'm trying to figure out what to do with my program- to stay, to go.  Get it done, don't compromise on the big goals but stay flexible enough on the smaller details.  Regardless of what happens, the plan is to leave Utah next fall.  That feels right. 

However, this obit, this remembrance, took me back to where I first began when I got into this affair with the education and the experience.  I wanted to go into public health because I wanted to help.  Not just to help, but to understand.  I want to find ways to help with the dark places of human existence: poverty, drugs, violence, mental illness, sexual assault, cancer, homelessness, HIV.  It's an impossible summit if I expect to fix any of it, but I don't.  I've seen too much in the way of violence and despair throughout my own experiences to expect that.  But I want to throw my lot in. In the words of The Wire, I want to be "counted."  Getting my degree was supposed to give me new ideas, new resources, new understanding about this.  In a way, the education has helped in the way it was intended, but in many ways, I wonder if it hasn't removed me from the things that matter to me, deep down.  I wonder if I am tough enough to insist on those things taking priority.  If I am honest, I also want to make a decent living and travel all over the world.  So it's not all do-gooder mentality. 

I have to start fighting to find a dissertation topic.  As in, I needed to have one yesterday.  McCullough's obit reminded me that, this area- this need to put in some work toward alleviating human suffering where I can- this is what came first for me.  This should be a priority.  This is still worth aiming for.  I'm not going to compromise this by working on some bullshit data whose outcomes won't mean anything to anyone- it has to translate.   It has to help.  It has to.  I find it amazing that the ripple effect from individual lives can spread out like this- so that someone like me, who has never even been to West Baltimore sees this life, sees this tragedy, and is taken back, is refocused. 

back to work now. 

Disagreement

In the beginning god created the heavens and the earth...

Fuck that, you said.
In the beginning there was nothing
and from nothing, an explosion and time.
Green things, insects.

Yes, two by two, right?

Jesus fucking Christ no!
All unique and amazing
all a slow pattern of motion
creeping forward, in hazy spirals.
Here, give me that,
you don't know what you're doing.

And what about the end, I said.
Reckoning?  Resurrection?

Global warming will cause oceans
to rise.
Catastrophic climate change.
We will wipe ourselves out.
The world will continue on
until one day it will be sucked into the sun.

But it ends?

Not really, you said.

Fuck.  For a moment, I thought we were getting somewhere.

We are, you said and wiped our eyes respectively. 
It's just not where we thought we'd be.

Spring

Now begins the long, slow process
of pushing underground
that which had come up green and tender
calling it bust
a 'seasonal' surrender
as if those slim fluted tendrils were my imagination
the damp earth
your hand in the night
no.
I saw it green and go too soon
and will remember

For today

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
—Howard Zinn

Big Jet Plane

Sometimes I wish all my feelings could be expressed by string instruments. Today, the strings in this song express it perfectly.

I liked this

Now and then I think of when we were together Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
I told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kinda sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
I don't even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough

No, you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
Guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believin it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
But you didn't have cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
I don't even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough

No, you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect you records
And then change your number
Guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Somebody that I used to know
Somebody (now you're just somebody that I used to know)
That I used to know Somebody that I used to know
Somebody
That I used to know
I used to know That I used to know I used to know Somebody

Picking lint out of my mental bellybutton

This year has been one of extremes. Extreme highs and lows- nights when I wasn't sure how I was going to get up the next day, mornings where I would look around me and marvel with gratitude that this was my life. I saw a manta ray swimming at 70 feet below in Cozumel and I'm not sure I've ever come closer to god in my life. I cried so hard I threw up, in a Houston airport bathroom, comforted by a flight attendant who told me it would look suspicious to security if I didn't peel myself up off the floor and go through customs.

The Dalai Lama says that those who are our enemies should be revered for their ability to teach us in a way that no other human beings can. He makes the point that we rarely have enemies in this life, and that, when we have one, it's an extreme gift. I have worked very hard to soften to this perspective, and have had time to work with it.

And now it is the end of the year, the end of this extremely challenging time. It may not be over- who knows what 2012 will bring-they say it may be the end of the world. But I thought I'd perhaps talk a little bit about what I think these days.

I believe in love. At the end of it all, I believe. And I still love.

I believe in myself. This year, I have lost many friends, my home, people I considered my family, and the person I loved most. I have been betrayed. I have been slandered. I have been hated. Some days, the only way I got through it was to turn up Lady Gaga's "Born this Way" as loud as I could and yell the lyrics to drown out the vicious inner noise. "Don't hide yourself in regret, just love yourself and you're set. I'm on the right track, I was born this way." And I do. I'm not perfect- I've made an avalanche of mistakes- but at the end of the day, I believe in me. I know who I am inside. This year has really helped to solidify that for me.

I believe in the power of karma. Pema Chodron describes karma not as getting "what you deserve"- not the punitive, hateful justice of some sentient universe- but rather, the idea that you are always given exactly what you need to learn the lessons you need to learn. This concept of karma applies to me, but it also applies to my hope for others. May we always get exactly what we need- and take advantage of it so we learn what we can from it.

I believe in the power of distraction. Byron Katie teaches that our minds do more harm to us than anyone else ever does. Someone may hit you, but every time you replay that thought in your head, you are also committing harm to yourself- reawakening that experience, that pain. If you consider how many times we reflect back on painful experiences, we end up doing ourselves harm quite a lot. By distraction, I don't mean simply thinking of something else (though sometimes that's what I've had to do- thanks to Netflix for putting seasons of television on instant view), but by consciously working toward creating space between our thoughts and how much emotion and stake we put into them.

I think happiness is something you work for, consciously. And that it's fleeting. But so is pain, even if it seems like it will never stop hurting. Every day, with work, little pieces move unseen, like cogs in a watch, until suddenly you wake up one morning and realize that you hurt a little less, that you forgive a little more, that everything is a little lighter. With enough work, I think someday you can get to a place where you start at a higher plane of happy, so that even if pain comes (and it always does), you can deal with it from a higher setpoint. That's my goal.

I believe in taking risks. With life and with love. Love is scary as fuck, but in order to make it work, you have to trust that you'll be ok, no matter what. Sometimes I still don't have that trust, but I think one day I will, as I get better at accepting pain and the unknown.

I believe in appreciating today. We have no idea what's coming. Love everyone as hard and as long as you can because if you knew that that moment would be the last time you'd ever see them, ever be that close, you'd hold them and kiss them and tell them you loved them like crazy, rather than just saying goodbye. And maybe that would make us all a bit nuts if we did that every time, but I know I'd have fewer regrets if I'd lived my life that way.

Anyway, I'll stop now. The nice thing about no one reading your blog is that you can write whatever navel-gazing bullshit comes up and there will be no witnesses.

"Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained."

-Seamus Heaney