moody834's posterous

The Road Goes Ever On

On the fourth of September my mother died. There is so much I could say about it, so much I could describe, but I have no energy to do so. Believe me when I say that I wanted on more than one occasion to spill my guts here and wail and keen until I was hoarse. How appropriate that one of the meanings of keen is, as a noun, an Irish funeral song accompanied by wailing in lamentation for the dead. My family was, in the end, and despite the French heritage and the vive la différence, an Irish Catholic family, with all the requisite pathos. So when my mother's illness finally came to a head, we all came together to be there with her.

What a motley gathering we made, with such an age range between we seven siblings, so clearly marked by our own histories, histories unfolded over and separated by decades,—and yet such an image is belied by the ease with which anyone might have noticed that we are all clearly family. We gathered around her, awestruck by the facts of her dying, gut checked by her suffering, stunned like deer in the headlights. Yet we functioned together well. We made effort for each other. Everyone found one way or another to go that extra distance to helping others. And so we passed through the hours of her last days, and then the hours and days after her death.

I really can't begin to find the language I'd need to use here, to thank my family for being who they were in that time. We managed to give my mother what she'd hoped for most. All of us were there, and we all spoke with her, together and alone, and reassured her of our love as she, in so much pain, managed to reassure each of us.

As for me, after she died, while she was yet laid in the bed in the hospice, I went in alone and whispered to my mother, "You did good, Mom." I lay my head against her head, and wept. Days later, I helped bear her to her final resting place, the hot Arizona sunlight pounding on everything as if to thoroughly illuminate the proceedings; a perpetual flashbulb, as it were, capturing the moment in some time transcending way.

Since that time, I have been putting myself back together. Some days are better than others, but no day so far has passed without my reflecting on her absence. Of course, in some really important way she will never be absent, because she raised me and I knew her as a child knows its mother. Her voice is always there, even if that voice now lives only as well as it is rooted in my memories. But I cannot call her anymore. I can't visit with her ever again. She'll never gaze upon me again, never tell me that she loves me and always will.

To lose her is to know heartbreak. It is to know an absence that cannot be filled again. There is no getting around it. Even the sweetest memories are now accompanied by an ache that arrives sooner or later and does not depart.

I will not speak here of my siblings or father, about how they are doing or what they are doing. I will not speak of what they believe or don't about her death. It is not something that I should do. But for me it must be said that I do not believe in any kind of afterlife. I would not attempt to convince anyone about it, but it's my conclusion. For me, it's especially what makes life so precious, and why it's so important to get the most out of it while you have it. The end is final. That's what I think, and have reason to consider true. I understand that some would take issue with my thoughts, or even find them emotionally distressing, but I have to be honest here for myself. I do not begrudge those who think differently, or think them fools. My hope is that they can respect and understand where I am coming from.

Because, really, what it means to me is that my mother is gone forever. All I shall ever have is the memory of her. My gut knows this. I wish I felt differently. Yet I would rather face the implications of that understanding than pretend to something that is not in me to believe. Life is too short, even as every year piles on more and more age that feels interminable. One day it will end, and then I will remain only as a collection of memories for others. I am grateful for the memories of my mother. Even where her flaws were truly flaws, I yet have no doubt whatsoever that she loved me truly and deeply. She gave me life and she helped form the person I am. I shall never be able to repay the debt I owe her, and yet it's a debt she would never have asked for me to repay. What she did, she did because I was her son, her flesh and blood.

I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.

Death is hard. September of 2011 is now the hardest month I have ever known. Whatever I lost before in my life, whatever pain, agony, depression, fear I knew, pales in comparison. Part of that is that I am older, and I recovered from those past events, while this remains fresh. I know. But part of it is that I had never, before last September, irrevocably lost someone I truly loved. I have hopes for seeing some people again. But I cannot hope to see my mother again. There's no way around it, no way through it. I can only continue on and bear it with me, and see it buried with me.

Spaced Out In San Clemente

Driving around San Clemente near sundown, window open, arm hanging out in the cool air. Summer's ending. Down by the ocean the waves are being blown in by a strong, steady wind, as if the setting sun was blowing ripples into the waves themselves. The water looks choppy. There's a few little boats out there but soon enough they and the surfers further down the shore will be gone. The lights on the pier will come on, and the evening crowd will visit their favorite places like usual, bumping elbows with the tourists who are in their final vacation-time throes.

Stoplight. People watching. I'm not really hurrying anywhere, not pressed to get somewhere, but I'd rather be home. Still, it's a nice evening coming on. The air is cooling, damp, close, but not cloying. It makes me want to go lie on the beach and just listen to the waves. I don't even need to see the sea to feel the beauty of it. Endless moments coming, wave after wave of them, and not a single one of them beholden to the one before or the one following after, yet all of them connected.

I was thinking about the Yin-Yang symbol. I feel like there's one thing you never hear about. People talk about the black and white, how they circle, and how they are part of each other, with the little circles inside each half. And that's all right as far as it goes. But I never hear anyone note how they are bounded in that circle. That is, it's Yin-Yang, and the circle both is and isn't Dao. Life is like that. I mean, there's good and bad, happiness and sadness, ecstasy and tragedy. And in each is a little of the other, it's so-called opposite, though you might want to call it its compliment at times. But the world, the realm, the space, the state in which they exist together is comprehending them both at once and wholly. They belong together as opposites/compliments, but more than that—they are together, and how they are together negates and affirms them simultaneously. We are the ones who find the demarcation, and we are the ones who decide what the pairs will be and what kind of pairs they will be. But looked at another way it's always an arbitrary thing, making that line. We just think it isn't. But all of this life is arbitrary. Life just happens to us. We're born, and at some point we look around and realize that we're who we are and that we're looking around and that self-reflection creates this sense of being a being in the world. We find ourselves as being in the world. Really, it's "a world". There are plenty of worlds. We just happen to live on this particular one because it was good enough for us to live here. But with every passing day we seem to discover that there are more and more planets, and more and more of them are closer to the Goldilocks zone, the place where beings like us can live. One day we'll find a planet in that habitable space, around some star like ours, or maybe red instead of yellow, and we'll suddenly realize that it's really possible that, somewhere, there are other beings like us, or near enough like us to make us dream about seeing them.

The ocean's waves roll in and in and in. The sun gets low enough that it becomes bearable to look at it through the thickness and haze of the air. Big, peachy orange, and spotted at present. There is the source of our lives, blazing out there, 93 million miles away, 8 minutes as the light flies. Beautiful and soon enough out of sight, revealing in its wake a universe filled with more stars that we could ever count, and those just the ones we can see reasonably well with our best telescopes. And I am not sitting at home and pondering these things with my mind, which inhabits my brain, not like a ghost or an homunculus but as an amazingly profound function of it. Carbon-based life form, me, thinking with electricity and chemical exchanges. Amazing. And the star I call Sol is out there, really close to us, relatively speaking.

How could you not find it inspiring? I want sometimes to jump up and clap and whistle and howl like a wolf and run around and roll in the grass. Being alive, and being able to love, and being able to think my thoughts and hear and understand the thoughts of others, some of whom have long since died but whose writing remains for me to read, is utterly astounding and humbling. There is so much for us to be moved by in such a simple thing as living a day and appreciating its for all it is. And for all it is not. For days are not magic and nights are not mysterious, not really. But our sense of them certainly can lend them these veils, give them such props. Sometimes, though, it is really good to just take them for what they are in their simplest quintessence. The quiddity of being falls to us with every moment we recognize. But days and nights are just what they are and no more. We make of them what we will.

For me, I find the dusk of a day poised on the edge of autumn to be more beautiful than I can describe, if during those moments I might take someone's hand and share it. I'm good with being be myself then, sure. But it's much better, in my esteem, to be able to feel someone's fingers twining with mine, the living warmth and moisture of that gesture, as some beautiful scene unfolds. There are nearly endless sunsets and sunrises. But the ones you can really be aware of are the best. Who would want more? I know, I know. There are practical concerns, and emotional matters, and who knows what other concerns from the myriads and myriads of things to be concerned about, and certainly a great many of them are truly pressing for a person. But every now and again there needs… no, there ought to be a sunset or a sunrise set aside for contemplation. If you are really fortunate, perhaps you can plan it out. Go out into the desert, away from the lights of civilization, among the saguaros and mesquite and scrub, where the rocks are weathered and ruddy and baked. Set up a tent and roll out some sleeping bags. Lie on your back and prop your head up and watch the sun fall away from you, then breathe deeply and slowly, and watch the sky light up with stars. Stars of the wild. Stars more numerous than you can take in. The Milky Way arching across the unlimited sky. Meteorites. Satellites. Planets. Comets. Go see that and you will come away with a better sense of your place in the world, I assure you. Especially if you are able to catch that rarest sense of all: the sense that you are a speck, clinging to the side of a nearly spherical planet that is orbiting a star, and that the Milky Way is, in fact, this three-dimensional view into the galaxy you are part of. That vastness stretches away for tens of thousands of light years. You can look right at the obscuring crowd of stars and dust and debris that clots around the galactic core. You are here, on this little planet, in the outer third of one of this galaxy's spiral arms, looking into its heart as deeply as you can. Imagine it. There's nearly a sense of vertigo there. But you are home, and there's nothing to fear. It's so big out there, but the earth is warm and full of breath and it harbors you as it harbors all its life for as long as it can. Nestled down in the embrace of its atmosphere, protected by a natural magnetic shield, you exist, as you. And to think, there are trees living today that have been living for thousands of years. And under the ground are the bones of animals that lived thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years ago. And the ocean's waves have been rolling in all that time, even though its boundaries have changed and will continue to change, under a moon that is slowly, almost imperceptibly, drifting away.

Can you feel what I am saying to you? It's breathtaking, this life. It's so much bigger than we are, any one of us, with our short little lives. But we each have the ability to make so much of the time we have, assuming that we are not robbed of it, or cheated of it, or denied it. And to me that is where I am sparked by something almost spiritual. You see, I feel like it's a real tragedy that any one person should be denied the opportunity to fully take on and love life. Any person who has been given breath, who has opened eyes on the world, who has been a child with an apparently open future, deserves the chance to have it all. How could any of us ever feel good about others being denied such a beautiful thing? But we can only do so much. Life is, after all, a not very easy thing. Certainly, there is much we can do to make it better. But history teaches us again and again that however much we could do, we will only do but a little of it. So what I think is, my goal is reasonably set if I make whatever effort I can, to the best of my ability, to help anyone I can. That feels right. Give food to those who hunger, a place to rest to those who have no shelter, safety to those who fear. We can do that, collectively. And its a moral obligation, isn't it? If one has a heart? Is it not simply what one ought to do? And for those who have food, and shelter, and safety, but who have not looked up into the night sky and seen for themselves what is there, then I shall at the very least encourage them to do so, and help them see why they should do so if I can.

The universe has taught me well, I think. Being human is a good thing. I do not begrudge the fox its fleetness, nor the whale its ability to hold its breath. I am not envious of the cat with its prowess, nor of the swift with its graceful flight. I am profoundly grateful that I may witness such animals, as I am that I can see volcanos and summer storms filled with lightning, as I am that I can taste such a variety of foods, as I am that I might lie beside my partner and feel her breath against my neck as her body moves with mine. Such experiences are, for lack of a better term, sacred. What I would call sacred. Sacred to me.

Life is.

Moments of Love, With Reflection

We sat and watched old movies together. Some Japanese film from 1967 that I can't remember the name of, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. We cuddled on the couch and didn't say more than a few monosyllabic words during the four hours or so we were watching. It was heaven, or close as one could get to it. Her body was so warm beside mine. And I realized that I was in love with her in a way that I had never been in love with another living being. You see, I didn't want to interrupt the movie watching to take her to the bedroom. I didn't want to leave the couch or have sex at all. I just wanted to be there, with her, watching movies.

She held my hand and rested her head on my shoulder as the scenes played out upon the screen. The room was unlit, save by the light of the TV and someone's porch light on the balcony across from us. It was better than any movie theater. The light from the TV flickered, grew, faded, moved the shadows around us, and the other light, which was more a yellowish light, called to the sleepy colors of the room and drew them forth the tiniest bit, so that reds and golds could be named with near certainty, while blues and greens remained ambiguous. It was the half-light of a dream. Her breaths were slow and even and untroubled as she leaned against me, and her fingers traced the ideograms of her unconscious in the palm of my hand.

You never know where you will end up in life. I've said it a million times if I've said it once at all. You can try to predict where you'll be, and maybe if it's only a year away you might be fairly close, but it seems to me that even that's a matter of luck if you are. Five years away? See, so many things can happen to a person in five years. In the last five years I've seen the deaths of a few people. Some of them I did not know personally, but a couple of them I was closer to, and I could not have predicted so well that those friends would die, despite illnesses that were harbingers. Meanwhile, people I was quite sure would die, did not. Despite harbingers of death's approach. So, things have changed for others. But maybe, well, I might have predicted that I'd be here. Even though I did not, in fact, do so. But ten years! No, there's no way. It's like the weather. Easy enough to go outside and say what it is. Not too difficult to predict what it will be on the morrow if you're a weather forecaster. But keep moving out in time, and certainty quavers and collapses. Ten years in human life is too long for predictions on a personal level. You have to start predicting for societies, whole cultures, nations, peoples. But who would have predicted the Arab Spring, eh?

She watched the final credits roll, then arose quietly from the couch and took my hand. "Come to bed," she said, her voice quiet and sweet. In some other world, we'd be doing this in some little village, and our lights would all be candles, and the privy would be outside or a chamber pot, and the only heat would come from us and a fire. We are not so special, I thought. Yet what we have is the only thing that matters to us, what we are is the only real special thing we have. I followed her to the bedroom, dark and cavernous in its darkness. After a moment, though, my eyes adjusted to the dimness. There was the faintest silvery light filtering in through the blinds, and by it I could make out the long curves of her body as she dropped her nightgown to the floor. I came to her and lay beside her, softly stroking her brow and her neck, tracing her shoulders with my fingertips as she moved closer to kiss me, her pillow lips pressing to mine, parting, her tongue soft and firm and… ahh. We made love in the quiet, still, darkness. And I realized that this was different than anything I'd ever known, this love I felt for her. Because it was all I wanted, now. I wanted nights like this. I wanted nothing other than her world and mine to be together.

An Untitled Story written on 750words.com (sans editing)

It is as if we fall from the sky like snow, oblivious to our fate as we drift among the other snowflakes, lost in dreams that speak to us alone. But as we fall, we become aware—within that blankness of white and swirling sense—of others. We see them spiral and whirl, turn and follow strange pathways this way and that way across the void. At some point we wish to know another. We yearn to yoke ourselves to some other crystalline form and to descend or ascend in tandem, free agents freely keeping together in a world without rhyme or reason.

So I thought as I woke from a deep and untroubled sleep, limbs yet weighted down with the soporific gravity of the bed. I opened my eyes as one would carefully let up two blinds. Testing the light. Uncertain of the time. The light was wan and anemic, and the chill seemed to push through the window to press against my bleary gaze, making me shut my eyes again and burrow, on my back, down into the bed for that fleeting comfort that only a moment before had been dear and sure and true. Alas, though; I was awake, and sleep was fled away back into the recesses of its silent abode before I could even trace its departing path.

Downstairs, I prepared a press of coffee. The merry little flames of the stove flickered and licked at the black teapot as I ground the beans. With each turn of the little crank on the grinder, a fresh, smoky scent rose to spur me on. In a little pot I heated fresh cream, whistling tunelessly, absently wondering what news the day would bring.

I repaired to my study and drew up the blinds, my eyes now seemingly hungry for the day's light however unsure of themselves they still seemed where focus was concerned. Beyond the pane and the porch the yard was laden with snow as the sky was lost to clouds. The stark, black tree stood naked and alone, a sentinel in the yard gone to a skeleton, yet strong and unafraid of its seasonal denuding. Beyond that, the forest of fir and evergreen mounted upward some way before gentling in its slope and falling back toward the level where the river sat in its icy stillness. The season was colder this year that last, and the snows fell longer and piled up deeper. Safe in the warmth of my home it seemed a dream nonetheless. Winter here was unconcerned with the life of the woods and the people who gathered like mortal limning along its edges. One either accepted this or moved away to warmer climes and friendlier places. But I felt no grudge against my presence from this land or its seasons. Rather, I felt sometimes as if there was, in that uncaring vastness, the strangest admission of empathy for all that lived and struggled and rejoiced and died within it. It was foolish, I know. Then again, I'd earned such a respite in foolishness the year my beloved died. His grave was just over there, by that other skeletal tree where a slender finger of land poked out into the turn of the river. Every spring, it was the first tree to show signs of returning life, the tree in the yard typically waiting a full two weeks to begin to rouse itself from its torpor. I knew this from many years, just as I knew that it had ever been so, and that that is why he'd chosen the spot to be buried.

I sipped my coffee, imbibing the earthy flavor and tasting the strength of the days in it. The beans had come from some faraway hillside in a faraway rainforest. It was a guilty pleasure, so, enjoying that brew, knowing that those beans had to travel so far to come to me here for my pleasure. But it really was my only vice, and I did not chide myself overmuch for the indulgence, not to say extravagance, of those cups. These were my final years. I'd lived a long time and known war and times of need fit to shrivel the heart into a crabapple, and yet love had borne me through it all. A cup of imported coffee was not what I would consider a failure of character, let alone a crime.

The papers on the desk were as I'd left them the night before. My letter to our son, not yet complete. Some project notes I was making still more notes about as I prepared coursework for my undergraduates. A shopping list for the grocer's delivery girl, who was doubtless still in bed just now and dreading her day's labor. Poor thing. I did not envy her, but truth be told I did wish I could be in her shoes. It had been a long time since I could meet such weather with a smile and a spring in my step, all hale and well met. Of course I would be on the porch later, bundled up against the chill air, to do my breathing exercises and to meditate on the season as was fitting someone who was yet connected deeply to her life. I would meditate and ruminate, and sooner or later I would cogitate, and from that would come some piece of writing I would put in my binder and place in my drawer and leave for the spring to inspire me to further effort. That was my way. That was how my first novel had been written. "For so was the winter, that we cracked our bones against that hoary drum to feel our hearts' vibration." Final line, chapter thirty-two, of the third and final volume, which referenced that first novel. A novel now so long out of print that it was doubtful any copy remained in existence, unless the dead letter office had captured one. I doubt I could even recount, with any accuracy, the plot or the denouement. But it had changed my life, and my darling's. Oh… my darling. Out there still by the river. Out there forever. Yet his smile still lingered on in the warmth of the hearth and bed, as his kisses returned with each swallow of this coffee, bidden and exulted in within the confines of my breast. May it ever be so.

In our twenties we had moved here to this isolated little plot, though not in the way most people move from place to place, all their belongings in tow, bright eyes and bushy tails, still a little breathlessly, and with trepidation like an insignificant stain on an otherwise clean shirt. No. We came during the war, with nothing other than ourselves and the debris of our former lives, packed into a car whose days were numbered before we'd even set out on the long, winding road to nowhere. We'd made arrangements with a family friend—on my side, of my parents, especially of my mother's acquaintance—and we were at least without worry about where we could go. So many people did not have anywhere to flee to when the war came. We were the young of our family, and our family was not without respected resources, and so we survived where so many others, no less worthy of life than we ourselves, did not.

When the war came to its end we found ourselves on the other side of the new borders, no longer welcome to return, though return we did on occasion, surreptitiously and at our peril, to commune with our surviving relatives. But eventually we were forced to remain in our new country, and only occasionally were we treated to the news of our lost home. The death of this elder or that cousin. The wedding of a niece or the conscription of an aunt. These things I remember well, and the yellow papers, bound with twine, kept in a very fine box beneath my bed, remind me of the details when I feel a little foggy.

So it goes, as Vonnegut said. I live alone now, without even the requisite "old woman's companion"—a cat. And that is all right. I am not so alone as all that. I teach my course at the university and my undergraduates defer to me with respect and admiration when I speak, even when it is I who learn the most in the exchange. They are so smart, and I am very proud of them all. I feel as if I can die, when the time comes, knowing that I did my best work with them, and that they will enter the rest of their lives better educated. So I will have no regrets.

And were my beloved waiting for me, I'd be in no more hurry to die to rejoin him, all that being said. But I don't believe he is. He is there, there in his grave by the river, and he is more earth and tree and worm than he is mine anymore, but my memories are alive yet. So he remains.

Today

Today… is the last day of my vacation, not including the weekend. Come Monday, it's back to the grind and the commute and all that. Only, now I'm 45. Really, that's not such a big difference in my world, and yet it certainly has me thinking. The average life expectancy of a male in the U.S. continues to rise, but it's still only about 75 years. My family tends to be long-lived. Both my parents are alive, though my mother is dying and my father's health is not robust. They are around 90 years old. Assuming that I live to be 90 (which is a big assumption), then my life is half over.

It's not a depressing thought, per se. It's more of an odd thought. I've always been rather stoic about my mortality. And as I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, it feels like I'm halfway through with a very long novel I am both writing and reading, with a cast of characters I could never have foreseen when I began.

My legacy will live on in those who survive me, and perhaps I'll be dimly remembered some 100 years from now. I'm no mover and shaker in world history. It's unlikely that the things I think will land me in the history books. My circle of life is intimate and close to me. So when I die, the memory of me will not go on forever. Then again, in the grander cosmos, no memory will go on forever.

So today matters. Every day matters. It's all we get. Each day, one after the other, for a limited span of time. Or, as Death put it to a character who just died in The Sandman #43, "You lived what anybody gets…. You got a lifetime. No more. No less."

 

And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend - What remains?

—Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus
     by Francis Brett Young

 

Lest you be under a misapprehension here, I am not depressed or sad. Rather, I am stoic. Not so much resigned to fate as curious about what it really means to be at the halfway point of my life, assuming that this is in fact the halfway point. And that's another thing, really; the assumption. I might have died several times in my life so far. I came close more than once. It could be later today that something kills me. You never know. But what is certain is that I'm alive right now, and it means something to me to be alive. I want to be alive. I'm happy to be alive. I hope it goes on for a good long while yet, this life. No, I'm just contemplating.

There is an endless goal in life, and that is to find meaning in it. Some decide on one meaning or another, or are raised to believe that there's a fixed meaning already, and that that's that. But others, like me, are not so sure. It seems as if the meaning of life is all fluid and malleable and unfixed. There are strange attractors, to be sure. Like love, for instance. But even then the meaning of love is not fixed, and love does not necessarily make life meaningful universally. Knowledge is not meaning. Understanding is not meaning. It's forever that old question, What makes meaning meaningful? Each of us has to answer that question for her or himself.

If I truly am halfway through this life, I think the next half will be steeped in the quest for the greatest meaning I can suss out in my existence. But I already know this: Life means itself. Consider it a philosophical corollary to Marshall McLuhan's statement, "The medium is the message." In any case, I hope that the quest leads me to meet and interact with more wonderful people. That's my dream. Then I could die happy.

Assessing the Weather

OK, so we're all on the same page. Let's recap.

The government of the United States is one big #FAIL right now. The promises of the president have proven to be negotiable for those whose interests are directly opposed to those who voted the president in. Those promises are negotiable because those who are opposed to the president are so utterly single-minded in their beliefs and prejudices that they are willing to destroy the nation rather than compromise, let alone capitulate.

The government of the United States is infested with religious fascists. Though they have not yet taken control of the government, they are working on doing just that. Efforts to give corporations and right-wing special interest groups carte blanche; efforts to undermine the court system via so-called tort reform, which aims to severely limit the amount of damages a person can recover from a wrong-doing company, and to severely limit the ability of a citizen to even bring such a case to court, and to severely penalize those who succeed in bringing the case but fail to win the case; efforts to censor or shut out government agencies whose findings are scientifically based, that refute climate skeptics and that warn of likely results of climate change; efforts to undo legislation supporting a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy; efforts to reduce, end, or otherwise negate the support of the homeless, the poor, women, infants, and children; efforts to hamstring the educational system while simultaneously attempting to push religion into the classroom (over and against the sciences); efforts to "Christianize" the government and the nation; there are the hallmarks of religious fascism. This is not a crackpot conspiracy theory. The evidence is everywhere.

The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is not merely compelling, it is staggering. Read NASA's official position. Read the UN's understanding. Read up on what real scientists are saying. And then look at who the deniers are. The reason the religious right leads the crusade against the findings and statements of climate science is very simple. 1) It counters their claims about their "God". 2) It counters the desires of their base, the very rich corporations that would continue to parasitize the world.

Ignorance is what keeps us going down the wrong path, and we cannot be properly educated about what's happening so long as they can continue to shout down or silence those who would educate us.

Imagine that you were in an auditorium, and there was to be a series of speakers who were there to tell you some unhappy but very important news that would directly impact your life and the lives of your children for hundreds of years to come. You might wonder about what was going to be said, and you might want solid proof before you would act. That's good. Now, imagine that as a speaker came up to the podium, two or three people began screaming "Liar!" and throwing eggs at the speaker. Imagine that despite this, the speaker continued to try to speak, putting up some slides on a big screen that everyone could see. Imagine that a those two or three people were joined by five or six more people, and that they began pelting the screen with rotten tomatoes and spray painting on it. Some of the speakers who were not yet called on were getting up and trying to make them stop vandalizing the screen, but as they did so, they'd be attacked viciously, some of them gagged, and the vandals would only scream louder. Imagine how difficult it would be to get a grip on what was going on. Imagine that the local and national news agencies came and began filming things, and that they insisted on interviewing the vandals for an equal amount of time as the speakers. Though there were 600 speakers up there, the vandals were assured that they would get a full half of the time allotted. Imagine then that certain of the news groups decided they believed the vandals, and they devoted 90% of their time to interviewing the vandals, while other stations continued to be "fair and balanced" in their approach, dividing the time equally. What do you suppose the net effect would be?

What would convince you that there was a real danger developing? How long would you sit on your hands and wonder when you should get involved? Would you question yourself if you thought, deep in your heart, that maybe you were ignoring things because they were unpleasant?

We are in danger. Real danger. The U.S. is under attack from within. Not by outsiders. Not by Muslims. Not by gay people. Not by people with brown skin. Not by women, infants, or children. We are under attack from within by religious fascists. And we are very quickly going off the rails on a steep slope with a crumbling edge over an abyss. And it may in fact be the case that what we really need to be thinking about right now is how do we want to brace for impact. How do we want to enter into this changing world. Because make no mistake: change is already happening in the environment, and even if we stopped pumping green house gasses into the atmosphere today, right now, it would take years before it stopped getting worse, and then—it would take many generations to get any better. It already will take many generations to get better.

I am not saying these things to scare or depress anyone. It is only human nature to want to avoid scary, bad things. It's all too understandable. But what's real does not care about how we feel about it; it's just as real regardless. The question remains, What will it take for us to relinquish our ignorance and to face the facts?

It doesn't matter what you was, / it's what you is. / And what you is / is what you are.

Who you are is all in your head. Your mind is in your brain. Change the brain and you change your mind. Change your mind and you change who you are.

I was told a story sometime back. A true story, heard secondhand but from a trusted source. It happened to a friend of a friend. A girl, let's call her Amy, grew up in the midwest. She had a normal life. A home, a mother and father. But it was all changed one day when tragedy struck in an unexpected way. Her mother was driving home from somewhere when she got in a very bad accident. In the accident, Amy's mother suffered a severe head trauma. She survived the accident and was apparently very fortunate. To all appearances she was "normal", and she looked to make a full recovery from the accident. Only, Amy soon became aware of something wrong, something that her mother did not see at all. Amy's mother was different. A different person. She did not behave as she had before the accident, and in fact seemed not to retain any sense of who she'd been before it. She divorced Amy's father, and stopped recognizing Amy as her daughter. She knew who Amy was, but she did not have any sense that Amy was really her child. She moved away and no longer would communicate with her family from before the accident. Amy told her friend that her mother had become mean-spirited and totally different as a person. She stopped speaking to her mother, because her mother made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with her or her former husband. The accident has changed who she was.

We like to think that who we are is immutable. Most of us do not believe that anything could make us into different people. Many people hold onto the idea of there being something essential, a soul or spirit, in the machine of our body, a homunculus, that retains our identity no matter what. But this just isn't true. There is no such thing. No soul; no spirit; no homunculus. What we think of as our "self" is an illusion created by the brain. Not a malignant thing, but an illusion nonetheless. If the brain is damaged, so can be this "self" we think of as our true identity. We do not persist as who we believe we are if something significant in the brain is altered.

What's strange to me is that some things appear to arise from genetics. For instance, a dislike of some type of food. Other traits appear to arise from experience. A fear of trains, for instance, brought about by having been frightened when young by a train. There is also the sense of self that is attached to the physical presence we live with. Ideas about who we are seem to be derived from self-reflection, fortified by experience and genetic dispositions. We think we know who we are, based on all these things. But it is only so on the surface.

If we gain a great deal of weight or lose a great deal of weight, we do not think we are a different person. Someone may say, "I feel like a different person!" But they do not mean it literally. Our physical reality is very malleable. It is more difficult when there is reconstructive surgery that drastically or significantly changes one's face. But even then, the reason we feel discomfort is because we have retained some idea of who we believe we are, and so how we believe we should appear. Subtle changes over time do not create such discomfort. Yet who really looks as she or he did as an infant, a toddler, a child, a young adult? If the process of change is slow enough, we do not notice how much we have really changed. I do not think or act like I did when I was eight years old. My eight year old self has far more in common with other eight year olds than it does with me now, here in my mid-forties. Yet I think of the eight year old me as me. As if all times and states of mind were contiguous and therefore one and the same. Facets of a solitary being.

In fact, such an examination points to the idea that even real changes of mind don't necessarily change our sense of identity. And yet, again, this is an illusion. So long as nothing drastic happens, that illusion will be maintained over time and remain effective enough that we will never wonder who that person in the picture or the mirror is.

Look at who you are, who you believe you are, who you think you are. Do you know yourself so well? Whence came you? All those memories that you regard as concrete and immutable, all those experiences…. Are they "you"? No. Of course not. "You" were the person who lived them. But that does not say who "you" are. Opinions? Likes and dislikes? Are they "you"? No. We know these things change. But you persist in thinking of these things are "yours", as identifying you the way the outline identifies the shape within.

We move through life. We do things. We are active agents in the world, effectively autonomous and unique. But what does that mean, really? One trauma away from becoming an other. One trauma away from being someone else. A stranger to oneself. One trauma away from believing that the person no one else recognizes anymore is the person you've always been. Because that is what Amy's mother asserted. She did not believe that anything about her had changed. She believed that she had always been exactly whom she felt herself now to be. No sense of a break. No sense of a lapse or a turn or an alteration. Her family broken apart, her husband and daughter alienated. She fled. She fled to a new life, convinced that it was the rest of the world that had gone wrong somehow.

We are not who we believe we are. Our selves are mutable, ephemeral, transient, malleable, temporal, mortal. There is no real you, save in what you believe and what others see, and these things are uncertain. We are fortunate when time and experience is good to us. We are lucky when we can keep the illusion and not have it torn away from us. Or are we?

What would we be if we were to relinquish the idea that who we are is somehow a real thing? What would happen if we let go of the idea of a persistent self, and instead decided to focus our idea of being on larger correspondences? I am human. I am a member of the human race. I am an animal. I live among animals and plants. I exist, because I recognize my state as being, and if I did not exist then I would not recognize any state at all. So, I am here, and all that means is that in this temporal, transient state I recognize and name for convenience' sake "my life", there are choices, and an ability to act on them. But beyond that, what is there? Human life goes its way. There are other people with whom I interact. No matter who I believe I am, things go better when we all do good together. What is good? Well, that's a matter for philosophy. But certainly there are baselines for what constitutes "good" behavior. It doesn't matter who I am. I am happy to know who you are, even if that is just as illusory. A smile still feels life-affirming. Kindness and sweetness are no less rewarding. Getting along together is worth the effort. So does it matter who we really are? Time will pass us by. We will return to the nothing from whence we arose. We, no more nor less than stars. We, no more nor less than quarks. We, who may define what matters and what has meaning for ourselves, and so make this experience of life a good one.

Who am I? I'm no one. I'm an ongoing equation that one day will return to zero. I am a complex of algorithms, functions, equations. That is not a bad thing or a sad thing. That is just the baseline. And if self is an illusion and reality a set of props and a backdrop against which my identity is projected, so be it. What does it matter to me? Wasn't it Steve Martin who said, "A kiss is not the truth, but it is what we want to be true"? Well, there you go. Don't worry about whether or not you are really you. Don't worry about whether identity is a convenient illusion created by your mind. Just do your best to make of your life a good experience. Don't worry about whether or not you'll get to keep it. Because you know the truth of it, really. Everything passes away. And all you have to yourself is now.

 

Wilding Fruit in the Headsman's Basket

Give us the opportunity to go somewhere grand, to have an adventure in the sense that all children understand the word. We want the sky! We want to take this dirigible and loft ourselves into the deepest blue-black sky, riding high above the roofs of the massive cumulous clouds, flickering red-purple with lightning in their depths beneath the crystal clear moon as she clears a path through the stars. We want to find ourselves over an ocean we've never sailed, and gaze across it to a land we've never seen. To be met with the sight of trees as tall as mountains, and mountains that scrape the top of the atmosphere, locked forever in ice and howling silence. We want to see dragons riding the updrafts of volcanoes, and cities like miraculous jeweled paintings, vast and rich as the most ornate tapestry as seen from on high. We want to travel on without fear of ever tiring, knowing that wherever we shall land there will be some story unfolding, in progress for ages before us, lasting for an eternity after we've passed on. Give us this chance and we shall forever entreat anyone we meet to hear us sing the praises of opportunity. Give us stories to regale our fellows with, stories carried from far away places that none shall have ever heard of outside myths and fairy tales and the dusty tomes of antiquity, hoary and revered like crones and wizards, of dubious authority but of a certain, poignant value.

Hear me now! Give us the chance to burst the gates of imagination wide and let loose the torrent of our hearts, racing with the thunder of a thousand horses wild and unbroken. Give us the chance to escape the curse of the narrow-minded, the solipsistic fools, the narcissistic royalty of dung heaps and abattoirs. Let us not perish in the deafened softness of senile old age, doddering along behind the donkey of docility and playing without knowing it in a mummers' farce. Set us free! Loose the chains of mediocrity and strike from us the shackles of insipid contentment!

Hear me! You! And you! And you, and you, and you! Hear me and heed me! There is a tragedy afoot in the theatre of the absurd, yet it does not get your goat! There is blood in your wishing well! There is a skeleton in the woodpile that bears the violence of ignorance in its supine posture! The bell has cracked and the tune has been lost! The song has lost its key and its treasure is locked away! Hear me! Heed these words and look not upon me as a madman or an idiot to be made mock of! Look upon me as a friend who has been in divers places and brought home the news to you, my eyes fixed upon a point forever just beyond where you think I should be looking. For I look upon something you have not yet seen… If only you would hear the news I bear!

Give us escape! Let me jump and catch the guideline ere it's cut, swinging out into the vastness of the evening air as I climb aboard the dirigible and stake my place with those who will not yield to the Law of Nod. Give me succor, you crew mates, and bid me sit once more with you at the galley table, nailed to the floorboards, as we sail among the stars and light our lanterns in their honor, there in the inky darkness between worlds. I promise that I shall do my duty and complete my chores and excel at my tasks so that, when the dawn comes again I shall be prepared to disembark from our craft and embark upon the newborn morrow, wherever we shall find it. Only, let me study at your university, and sit among the wise, and study the crafts of the elders until I surpass efficiency. Let me gain new strength in these limbs, new depth to the breath of these lungs, new light and perception for these eyes, more suppleness and tenacity moreover… Let me… Let me carry that sword, and wear the colors of our honor guard, and I shall fight the evil that assails the great timepiece of existence! I promise! I promise! Only… don't leave me here!

Don't leave me here.

For what shall I become without you, my friends, who tussled and mussed my hair as we rode through the sky, with a million million stories leading us onward? What shall remain of me should I be left here to linger among the dying dreams? Do not leave me. Do not… go… my loves…

Did I tarry so long in the dreary heaven of the unimaginative lands, thinking gold and wine were treasure, and the trusses of a jail were more secure than the beams of light that race forever through the sky? Did I drink poison in a fit of delusion, thinking it the fountain of youth when it was a pig trough in a plague dead town? Or did I merely fall through the veil of despair, waking in the wake of that sad, last passage into that state the lumpen call adulthood? Did I sacrifice my secret heart to attain a moment of belonging with the throngs of the living dead?

No. That cannot be. One only loses when one no longer fights. My body and mind are not so scarred, nor do I lie bleeding on the midden. I am not yet in the potter's field. The song of the lonely horn has not yet commanded me to rest, nor has the solitary bell tolled the end of my debt. I still bear the doom of all beasts, in that I live and breathe and hope… hope. I am yet alive.

I shall hope, then, if that is the cost of passage. No begging, no prayers, no outbursts from these lips shall sully the sought for realization. But I shall express my hope in these deeds you hold as honorable. To be good. To do well for others. To answer the clarion call of a just cause with the enthusiasm of a conscious person. And as I am a man, I shall elevate my idea of what it means to be a man so that none shall doubt it is a fine thing and noble to be so. And I shall hope. And one day, sometime, you'll return for me here. And I can go home again.

Love on the Brain

There was no real sensation that he could put a label on. It wasn't a tingle, and it wasn't cold. It wasn't like numbness, but it wasn't like a pure absence, either. It felt like nothing he could describe. At least it wasn't painful. The cap on his head and the brackets that held his skull still were not uncomfortable, just weird. He breathed out, and the doctor's voice came over the intercom. "Almost ready, Don. Just breathe normally. I'll be in a minute." The little speaker was set into the ceiling. If he looked up as high as he could, he could see about a third of it. The room was white. Even the seats were white. The only colors were labels on jars and packages, the gold of official seals on the various diplomas and awards, and a solitary picture, done in the impressionist style, of a sailboat moving along the shore of some tropical paradise. It was soothing, he guessed.

After a minute or so, the doctor entered the room through the white door. "Well, Don, we're ready." Don smiled nervously. He'd been told not to talk, so he swallowed compulsively, suppressing the urge to verbally acknowledge the doctor. Dr. Finch was a tall man with a head of silver hair sketched with a No. 2 pencil. He had kind, watery hazel eyes and a mouth like Carrie Grant's. He moved efficiently. Behind Don, he began using the keyboard of a laptop computer. "You'll feel a little warmth at the point of your head I showed you earlier," he said. Don wanted to nod, but couldn't. "Try to remain still," Dr. Finch said.

For a moment, there was nothing, no sensation, no change. Then Don felt it. A strange trickle of warmth that spread through a region of his brain. It was very, very odd. Don could actually feel the physical presence of that part of his brain. It was the oddest thing he'd ever felt. It turned his stomach a little, like when you see a bone exposed in a compound fracture. It was a sensation that felt inherently wrong. You shouldn't be able to feel your own brain. "You may feel some nausea," the doctor said. "It should be passing right… about… now." And it did. "There. OK. Ready?" Dr. Finch walked around in front of Don with something in his hand. An 8x10 photograph, currently concealed. "Now, Don, I want you to look at this photograph when I show it to you. I want you to look at it for a few seconds, and then tell me what you feel or think. All right? All right."

The picture was of a woman. She was around Don's age, Don thought. She had a sweet, oval face. In the picture she was smiling kindly, looking directly at Don. Her smile filled Don's focus. She was lovely. But it was more than that. She was so beautiful. And he realized that he loved her. He loved this woman he was looking at, whom he had never before seen. She was attractive in a way that gave his stomach the flutters. He felt bashful, aroused, interested, happy. He loved her, and this made him feel so uplifted that he forgot himself and he laughed aloud. O! Love! He loved her so much! And she made him giddy with that smile. A smile just for him, he knew instinctively. She loved him. She had to love him. Don loved her smile, and her kind, knowing eyes. "Don?" They were… would be… are… would… be so good together. Because he was in love with her. "Don? I need you to talk to me, now. What are you thinking? What are you feeling?"

Don looked at the doctor. "I'm in love with her! Who is she? We… should be together. I know it sounds crazy. I do. But I can see it as plainly as anything." Dr. Finch listened attentively, then made some quick notes on his iPad. "All right, Don," the doctor said, and took the picture with him as he walked behind Don again. "May I take the picture with me?" Don asked. "What's her name? Is she here? Does she work with you?"

"I'm going to need you to be quiet again, Don," the doctor said, not unkindly.

"All right," Don said, and was quiet. He didn't mind being quiet. He could content himself forever, just thinking of her.

Then he felt the sensation again. And for a moment, he had a sense of utter horror. He knew something was happening that should not happen. He knew it was wrong. He knew. And then he felt normal again. Normal. And his stomach churned. Normal.

The doctor walked back around to stand in front of him again. He had the strangest expression. Since they'd first met and talked about the doctor's research and what Don's role would be in it, he had never seen Dr. Finch look worried or overly concerned about anything. But now this had changed. The doctor turned the picture around for Don to see. It was, of course, the woman. A woman. A woman Don did not know, and had never met. And in his heart there was nothing for her. He felt no love. He felt the indifference one feels for strangers in pictures that have no context. And then he was in free fall. The floor came out from under him and he went tumbling through it into a vast and empty darkness. He realized that he didn't care.

In the trauma unit he lay on a bed of soft, baby blue. The warm blankets were soft, blank white. A heart monitor beeped steadily, and Don could hear voices from outside the plain brown door with its chrome handle. He felt… nothing. Or, rather, it wasn't that he felt nothing. No. No. Because he did feel something certain. Loss. A loss that was bigger than him. A loss he did not know what to do with, so it was a lot like feeling nothing. It was too big to process.

 

Years later, Don was sitting with a coworker in a bar. He'd been drinking, and was feeling as talkative as he ever did nowadays. His coworker, Allen, had asked him why he never went out with Loraine. "She's so clearly into you, man," Allen said. And Don nodded, a little blearily. "You should go out with her, really," Allen said.

"Did you know that there's a place in your head where love lives?" he asked Allen. "There is. And it can be turned on or off. For anyone. Anytime."

"Whoa," Allen said. "That's a trip."

"Yes," Don agreed. "Once you know that, you kind of wonder what it is you feel for anyone. What it means to be in love." He looked at Allen, and Don felt a sad certainty that he should not be talking about this. "Never mind," he said.

He left the bar by himself and headed down to the river, crossing over the bridge at Archer St., then turning around and crossing back to the halfway point. He never could fall in love after that day, so long ago. He wanted to. But there was something wrong that he couldn't fix. He'd seen the face of the woman he loved, his soul mate. He'd looked at her and known for a certainty that it was her. Of all the women in the world, she was the one, and he knew it and all he had to do was meet her and she would have said, "Oh! It's you!" And they would have been happy forever. He knew it. He knew it. And then the doctor had flipped a switch, and it was a lie. She was, as it turned out, a model who posed for the doctor, because he needed some woman to sit for the picture he required. She was not Don's soul mate. Don knew. He knew. And yet some part of his mind tried as hard as it could to get that feeling back. Because how could you be deceived about that? How could it be that your mind could simply be manipulated into believing something like that? And he didn't want that to be the truth. He looked at her picture and he willed her to be the one he had just seen. And nothing had made it so. No amount of hope. No amount of need. Nothing.

He jumped from the bridge at 5:15 PM, and his body was recovered two hours later.

A doctor interviewed about the sad matter of Don's suicide said that Don suffered from clinical depression following his participation in some medical research. "There was no wrongdoing," the doctor said, "There were no lingering effects from the research, I can assure you."

"How can you be sure of that," the journalist asked, somewhat pointedly.

"Because," the doctor said, "As you know, I was part of the committee that investigated Dr. Finch's research, including all test processes and results. All of them. And the fact of the matter is that Don was in the control group."

"I don't understand," the journalist said.

"Nothing whatsoever was done to him," the doctor said. "It was all in his head."

On The Reading List: Blogs

Below you'll find a few of the stories I've been looking. I hope you'll check them out as well.

• How to feed a hungry world

This week, the G20 Agriculture Ministers gathered for their first-ever meeting to discuss potential measures to address price volatility and record high food prices. The key to any long-term solution is acknowledging that we need to empower the very people whose lives are most affected by food shortages. Three-quarters of the world's poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land. The potential of small farmers for getting us out of this and future food crises cannot be overstated.

• "The Fever" by Sonia Shah

Malaria is one of mankind's most ancient scourges. A century after the discovery of its cause, various species of the parasite Plasmodium, humanity still remains in its deadly grip in many areas of the world. Malaria is estimated to have caused 225 million illnesses and almost 800,000 deaths in 2009, making it one of the top infectious disease killers. Many of these deaths occurred in children under the age of five.

• Monday Photoblogging: The Old LA Zoo

The LA Zoo wasn't always in as nice a facility as it is now. The "old" LA zoo was built in 1912 and was in use until 1965, when it moved to its current location just a couple miles away in a different area of Griffith Park. It's open to check out, and is adjacent to a picnic area. There are fenced off areas, but all the fences have giant people-sized holes in them. We thought of it more as: "enter at your own risk."

• The Global Warming Crisis

About a week and a half ago, I wrote an article called The Power of Theory In Science, where I mentioned the Big Bang, Evolution, and Global Warming as some of the leading scientific theories describing a variety of natural phenomena. And while no one took issue with my assertion that the Big Bang and Evolution were the best scientific theories describing (respectively) the origin of our physical Universe and the diversity of life found on Earth today, there were plenty of challenges to my assertion on global warming.

• Another Week of GW News

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup

• Reinventing the Formal Economy

As I gear up to finish my Adapting-in-Place book, I've been thinking a lot about the role of the informal economy in supporting a culture that can't keep growing and consuming resources at the same rate. As those of you who have been following my work for a while know, the informal economy represents the larger portion of the world economy (3/4 of all economic activity) and includes a wide range of important activities. When the formal economy fails, the informal economy is needed - and yet we have stripped the informal economy over the last decades. How to rebuild is a huge question - and one whose radicalism can't be overstated. It involves completely reinventing our economy, among other things, since the domestic informal economy stands against industrial growth capitalism and undermines the idea that we can have economy based largely on consumer spending. If you make, rather than buy, well, that changes a lot of things.

• It's always good to go straight to the source

I tell other scientists all the time that their work is being appropriated by creationists who barely understand it, and that it is getting distorted to support bogus pseudoscience. Whenever you see a creationist quote a genuine science paper, you can pretty much trust that it is going to be mangled beyond recognition

And that's it for now. ::Phew!:: Do feel free to share any stories you've read recently or would otherwise recommend. I'm always looking for more stuff to read, and a good recommendation is a great motivator.