End of Term

This is Wednesday -- April 24th, 2013. And there is less than a week left in the Spring Semester here at STC.  And the students are desperately trying to finish up, make up, complete, and and some way cap off their classes for the term.  Fatigue is high enough that both the good and the not-so-good students are all struggling. 

And I am struggling too. Endtimes are always a bit emotional, even in something as seemingly ordinary and everyday as a semester in college.  I won't be seeing "such and such a student" ever again -- and I marvel at their capacity to move on, to change, to grow, to grow out of, to revert, to go into hibernation, to understand and continue to learn, to forget.  I marvel at all of those capacities because I anticipate all of them happening one again -- as "per" usual. And the wheel turns.
 

Monday I Am

On these days of slow recovery, after a weekend; after a national tragedy or two; after too-little sleep -- comes a Monday. And all day the body and mind work to keep up -- work to make sense, work to find energies sufficient to last the day. On that kind of day -- like today -- when it is too Monday to be anything else. On that day I want to sleep -- and be alone -- and be lost; all by myself.

Today is Monday. And all of the conditions above apply. And I am Monday -- all day. 

On the Run

As I write this at 10:00 AM EDT Friday Morning, April 19, 2013, the last of the bomber suspect brothers is still on the run in Greater Boston. One of the alleged bombers has been shot and killed, and his younger brother has fled to somewhere in the nearby area. 

Hundreds and hundreds of police, military, and federal agents are sweeping the Boston area, house-by-house, in an effort to end the chase; hopefully without further blood being shed.  Already an MIT university policeman has been killed overnight, and a Transit Authority policeman has been injured.  And the entire city of Boston and most of the Northern suburbs have been put on "lockdown" -- a term and concept not easily applied to major cities, usually applied to schools (where the children are kept inside for their own safety).

There are many tragedies happening because of this extended drama -- the Muslim religion is taking another "hit" as anti-American/anti-freedom/anti-life; the concept of legal immigration will be set back some time in the midst of real progress being made on that issue; violence has begun to settle in as "the new normal" in every American's life; the "fear" of just living in our modern world has been disproportionately jacked up to incredible levels. And we still have to live on -- through it all. 

The Awful Truth -- April 17th, 2013

America has been hit again by terrorism. Now the conspiracy theorists, the truthers, the "strangos," the religious zealots, and every new type of crazy will be coming out of the woodwork to blame whomever is their objective. Common sense seems to elude many of  us at these times and all the fringe elements of society flock to the front -- seeking attention, but also attempting to explain away the tragedy with some god-awful type of idiocy.

Isn't the horror of the event enough? Can't we wait to find out what really happened instead of constructing yet-another ridiculous "ancient alien" theory? Aren't we mature enough to be patient with ourselves, our system of laws, our seekers of truth in our governments -- without trying to supersede information with our own personal myths?

I mourn quietly and internally for the victims -- the three innocent souls who died (and their loving families), the hundreds who were injured or shattered (and their families), and the millions who are saddened and effected by all this mayhem.  May they find happiness in spite of all this sadness and pain. 

Tragedy in Boston--April 15, 2013

However this mess turns out -- whether the terrorism was foreign or domestic, political or personal; the death of innocent human beings remains a horrendous and insidious tragedy.  Every human being should react with appropriate disgust, anger, and the desire to see justice done for all the innocent who have died or who are maimed for life. The world has changed, but hopefully not so much that life is cheaper than death,
that any ideology is more important than common sense.

I want justice for that eight year old boy who died, for his six year old sister, for his Mom desperately trying to recover from a traumatic brain injury.  I want justice for all the innocents who are "torn up" by wars, by drones, by bombs, by idiots who practice violence to eschew their own moronic philosophies.  Americans try to do the right thing; they try to be on the side of justice.  But when and where we are not we must change -- we must grow -- we must side with compassion and love. 

Right Write

Enough musing already -- can you just "cut to the chase?!" Can you just stop being philosophical or intellectual about the whole thing? Give us the meat and potatoes -- give us the names of those you want to hurt.  Stop lallygagging and just tie them to the stake and ..dammit...have at them.

Nope. Will never do that.  If philosophy teaches a person anything -- it is that a person is not always right, and usually cannot recognize when he's wrong.  Yikes.
Confusion in the palace.  How the hell am I supposed to know whether I am being truthful, or just plain elusive? To lie or not to lie.  Can I really stick to my idea to always be truthful? God, I hope so. I sure as hell hope so. 

Incisive not Divisive

Those moments that mean something -- are precious, and turn one's whole life around.  There was a moment when a woman put her hand in mind and all doubts about us as a couple evaporated into air. There was a moment when I felt the ping of intellectual enlightenment while teaching -- when I knew that I had to do this, that this teaching would be my life.

There were those moments too when I was touched by someone, or touched them, and I realized deep in my soul that this twosome was wrong.  Such moments are incisive -- they are the real "Occam's Razor" on which life and morality hang. Living on that bladepoint, even for a scant second, allows one to see the future unfold, or the entire past left behind in vain.  The blade edge of decision is always a possible turning point -- always a moment of great danger; because when it occurs we are vulnerable to error, to the "big mistake," to the ultimate betrayal, to doing a total injustice to someone so innocent that to do so would condemn the doer in anyone's hindsight. 

We should never allow our behavior to defy or falsify our ultimate purpose in life.  No behavior shoud divide us from our true self, the self that we imagine that we are. We are not paradigms of virtue -- or even repositories of honesty.  We are what we are because we are the way we are. We do as we need to do because we desire to be true to what we are. So we are left with what is left -- what we imagine ourselves to be.   

Past and Present both Present

One way to try and distinguish the things that I write, both for myself and others -- will be to follow the separate pathways of memoir and current history.  Things happening now are of course most immediate and demand a kind of constant scrutiny -- but things that have happened "a long, long, long time ago" are noted and noteworthy for the impact they have had on the full life of a person. 

My past is filled with mistakes amid many strong decisions -- the mistakes I am sure outnumber the successes, but I have learned to live with both. When one is a realist, a fatalist, a little bit of a skeptic, and a constant searcher for truth -- one has to accept the occasional road not taken, or even the road chosen badly. I have underestimated people and overestimated them -- but now hindsight yields the truth that neither is a true mistake, but merely a failure to note the clear-eyed obvious fact: that people are unpredictable but they are still always "people." I love and have loved the people I have been around, interacted with, palled around with, been friends with, made love to...  I love them all -- even though at times they failed me, and more often have been failed by me.  At times I have not "read" them correctly and have overextended my connection with them -- though I can honestly say I have never consciously "used" others once I knew their true thinking about me. I can even declare honestly that at times I too have been "read" incorrectly.

The above is true in all situations: friend to friend, colleague to colleague, buyer to seller, man to woman, sibling to sibling, child to parent.  The only tiny mote of praise I can make about myself -- is that I honored people so much that I never tried to use them beyond the level they were using me.   

Decimated

Sometimes Spring decimates the human spirit.  Nature revives generally, but unevenly and there are elements that don't revive at all but continue instead the slow nature of their own destruction.  Friendships can be in either of those categories -- reviving or self-destroying.

As spring waxes I become more and more aware of myself -- my idiosyncrasies, my chosen differences, my humor, my lack of humor about myself, and on and on and on. 

Tosha is coming to visit in two weeks. For Spring.  And to see her friend's play at Armstrong Atlantic.  And to see...me.

About all this my morbid and self-aimed sense of life undercuts my desire to be happy, and healthy, and whole.  I need, I think, to let go and feel things. And be happy.  And live. And be.